Feature request: Serialization and deserialization using serde

[JonathanWoollett-Light]

An implementation similar to how ndarray implements serde for serialization and deserialization would be a useful feature to see.

[9prady9]

I don't know how ndarray is implemented but Array from arrayfire-rust is a RAII style construct.

I think this can be implemented by calling Array::host method to fetch data from GPU memory to host memory - at which point this regular array can be serialized using serde as usually.

Having said that, above logic can be easily implemented at user level too since I wouldn't imagine if we would do anything different from the above.

@umar456 @syurkevi any suggestions ?

My only concern is, is it worth it to add a whole new runtime crate dependency just for serialization when it can be very easily implemented using function Array::host ? Perhaps, serialization feature as separate crate makes sense 🤔

[emmatyping]

@9prady9 serde is the defacto standard for serialization and deserialization in Rust. It would be great if there was a feature for ArrayFire Rust that would enable serde serialization. Otherwise I'd have to implement it myself, which is a) more complicated and b) re-creates a lot of work that belongs in this repo IMO.

[emmatyping]

I came across this: https://github.com/shibii/arrayfire_serde but it is for an older version. I forked it here:
https://github.com/ethanhs/arrayfire_serde

[9prady9]

@ethanhs What all types would require this support in your opinion ? I haven't looked at the repository you shared yet, but it does talk about sedre support for all types of ArrayFire.

I have removed the discussion tag for this issue. We can work on this feature, but unfortunately I can't give an exact ETA on this. You are welcome to contribute the change if you are interested working on it.

[emmatyping]

@9prady9 The crate I forked implements it for Array, Dim4, and DType.