Amazon Web Services is hoping for a little open-source love to boost the development of its preferred deep learning neural network framework, MXNet.

The cloud computing giant Monday announced that MXNet has been accepted as an Apache Incubator project, the first step on its way to becoming a part of the Apache Software Foundation.

MXNet entered the spotlight last year when AWS said it had chosen the framework as the foundation on which it would build its own deep learning technologies. Deep learning is a subset of artificial intelligence, which attempts to imitate the workings of the human brain in processing data and creating patterns for use in decision making. It has led to recent breakthroughs in image and speech recognition and other complex tasks. MXNet is just one of several popular deep learning frameworks to emerge in recent years, alongside Google Inc.’s TensorFlow, Microsoft’s Corp.’s Cognitive Toolkit and others.

At the time it announced it was backing MXNet, AWS said it had chosen the framework for its ability to scale across multiple graphics processing units, which are the most common processors used for deep learning, and for its ability to work on a wide variety of devices. The company also pointed to its support for a breadth of programming languages, including mainstays such as C++, Python, R, Scala, MATLAB and JavaScript.

AWS said that by becoming an Apache Incubator project, MXNet would be able to take advantage of the ASF’s processes, stewardship, outreach and community support, all of which should accelerate development of the project.

Speeding up MXNet’s development is important for AWS, since the framework still lags behind TensorFlow and others in the popularity stakes. AWS will continue to do its part as well. It plans to contribute more code and documentation to the project in an effort to make it more attractive to developers.

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