Major Features and Improvements
* Added a distributed runtime using GRPC
* Move skflow to `contrib/learn`
* Better linear optimizer in `contrib/linear_optimizer`
* Random forest implementation in `contrib/tensor_forest`
* CTC loss and decoders in `contrib/ctc`
* Basic support for `half` data type
* Better support for loading user ops (see examples in `contrib/`)
* Allow use of (non-blocking) Eigen threadpool with `TENSORFLOW_USE_EIGEN_THREADPOOL` define
* Add an extension mechanism for adding network file system support
* TensorBoard displays metadata stats (running time, memory usage and device used) and tensor shapes
Bug Fixes and Other Changes
* Utility for inspecting checkpoints
* Basic tracing and timeline support
* Allow building against cuDNN 5 (not incl. RNN/LSTM support)
* Added instructions and binaries for ProtoBuf library with fast serialization and without 64MB limit
* Added special functions
* `bool`-strictness: Tensors have to be explicitly compared to `None`
* Shape strictness: all fed values must have a shape that is compatible with the tensor they are replacing
* Exposed `tf.while_loop` (deprecated `control_flow_ops.While`)
* run() now takes RunOptions and RunMetadata, which enable timing stats
* Fixed lots of potential overflow problems in op kernels
* Various performance improvements, especially for RNNs and convolutions
* Many bugfixes
* Nightly builds, tutorial tests, many test improvements
* New examples: transfer learning and deepdream ipython notebook
* Added tutorials, many documentation fixes.
Thanks to our Contributors
This release contains contributions from many people at Google, as well as:
Abhinav Upadhyay, Aggelos Avgerinos, Alan Wu, Alexander G. de G. Matthews, Aleksandr Yahnev, amchercashin, Andy Kitchen, Aurelien Geron, Awni Hannun, BanditCat, Bas Veeling, Cameron Chen, cg31, Cheng-Lung Sung, Christopher Bonnett, Dan Becker, Dan Van Boxel, Daniel Golden, Danijar Hafner, Danny Goodman, Dave Decker, David Dao, David Kretch, Dongjoon Hyun, Dustin Dorroh, e-lin, Eurico Doirado, Erik Erwitt, Fabrizio Milo, gaohuazuo, Iblis Lin, Igor Babuschkin, Isaac Hodes, Isaac Turner, Iván Vallés, J Yegerlehner, Jack Zhang, James Wexler, Jan Zikes, Jay Young, Jeff Hodges, jmtatsch, Johnny Lim, Jonas Meinertz Hansen, Kanit Wongsuphasawat, Kashif Rasul, Ken Shirriff, Kenneth Mitchner, Kenta Yonekura, Konrad Magnusson, Konstantin Lopuhin, lahwran, lekaha, liyongsea, Lucas Adams, makseq, Mandeep Singh, manipopopo, Mark Amery, Memo Akten, Michael Heilman, Michael Peteuil, Nathan Daly, Nicolas Fauchereau, ninotoshi, Olav Nymoen, panmari, papelita1234, Pedro Lopes, Pranav Sailesh Mani, RJ Ryan, Rob Culliton, Robert DiPietro, ronrest, Sam Abrahams, Sarath Shekkizhar, Scott Graham, Sebastian Raschka, Sung Kim, Surya Bhupatiraju, Syed Ahmed, Till Hoffmann, timsl, urimend, vesnica, Vlad Frolov, Vlad Zagorodniy, Wei-Ting Kuo, Wenjian Huang, William Dmitri Breaden Madden, Wladimir Schmidt, Yuan Tang, Yuwen Yan, Yuxin Wu, Yuya Kusakabe, zhongzyd, znah.
We are also grateful to all who filed issues or helped resolve them, asked and
answered questions, and were part of inspiring discussions.