Richard – A CNN written in C++ and Vulkan (no ML or math libs)
This started out as a personal effort to learn more about machine learning. It's currently a CLI app where you give it a JSON file specifying your network architecture and hyperparameters and point it to your training data, then invoke it again in 'eval' mode with some data it's not seen before and it will try to classify each sample. I don't see many other people using Vulkan for GPGPU, and there may be many good reasons for that, but I wanted to try something a bit different. I've made every attempt to make the code very clean and readable and I've written up the math in…
Richard – A CNN written in C++ and Vulkan (no ML or math libs) launched on March 15, 2024 with 184 votes, #267 of 4,270 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 2 years on.
In plain words
Richard is a convolutional neural network implementation written in C++ and Vulkan without relying on external machine learning or math libraries. It functions as a command-line tool that accepts JSON configuration files specifying network architecture and hyperparameters, trains on provided data, and classifies unseen samples in evaluation mode. The project uses Vulkan for GPU computation and includes detailed mathematical documentation. It serves as a learning resource for understanding neural network mechanics and demonstrates an unconventional approach to GPGPU programming.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
Richard is gaining power. Contribute to robjinman/richard development by creating an account on GitHub.
In the maker’s words, at launch
This started out as a personal effort to learn more about machine learning. It's currently a CLI app where you give it a JSON file specifying your network architecture and hyperparameters and point it to your training data, then invoke it again in 'eval' mode with some data it's not seen before and it will try to…
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