Julia in Jupyter?


#1

I understand only the Python 2 kernel is currently available.
May I ask for the kernel for Julia (http://julialang.org) to be made available?
Its near-C speed makes it great for data analysis in a notebook.


#2

We will publish our Jupyter notebook roadmap in the Collaboratory before the 2016 Summit in Florence. Are you going to the summit?

The one thing I would say that we’re aware of Julia and the addition of non-Python kernels to the Jupyter system is interesting to us, but we have some higher priority items on our list.

Roughly speaking, in order of priority:

  1. More flexible kernel container management - Currently a user can run only one type of kernel at a time and it can be only docker image.
  2. More scalable infrastructure on the backend - we’re looking at options to provide significantly more computation capacity for the notebooks. This will mean larger memory and more CPUs available to running kernels.
  3. Additional kernel types for Spark and other languages. Julia would be a candidate but would be based on a user survey.

In the meantime if you can describe specifically what sort of work you’re doing with the Jupyter notebooks maybe we can suggest some alternatives to the current Collaboratory system.

I hope that makes sense and helps you to understand what is coming next.


#3

Thanks!
On a similar theme, do you make your Docker images available?
It would be useful to run locally notebook that can - out of the box - have NEURON and/or NEST, while being de facto compatible with the platform running online.

Thanks for your reply.
Michele


#4

We’re almost ready to do that. The limiting factor is a key piece of software which we developed when the Collaboratory was initially developed at Blue Brain. We shouldn’t release the docker container until that software has been opensourced.

After that, no problem.

In the meantime you can see what we have installed in the latest versions of the notebook kernel here:
https://collab.humanbrainproject.eu/#/collab/509/nav/12747


#5

Hi !!! May I ask you whether the Docker image has been (or will be) released?


#6

Hello Michele,

We will soon start to work on the standalone Docker image integration (no precise release date for the moment)
However there is no plan at the moment to integrate the support of Julia notebooks.

Don’t hesitate to consult our release notes at this address to get more details on what has been added : https://collab.humanbrainproject.eu/#/collab/509/nav/46761


#7

Hi Michele,

at CSCS, we are planning to support the Julia kernel in the dev environment starting from next Week and in the production environment one month later.

I will be happy to give you more information.

Best regards,

Sam

PS: @mgiugliano, Julia is already available as a normal module on Piz Daint.