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Software Engineering vocabulary · Machine Learning and Data Processing

Weights

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/weɪts/nounCommon term

In software engineering, weights means: The learned numbers on the connections of a neural network, which decide how strongly each input affects the next layer. Together they hold what the model has learned.

In Turkish: ağırlıklar

How it is used

Usually plural. Engineers load, save, freeze, share and download weights, and 'the weights' often means the trained model file itself. An open-weight model is one whose weights are published, even if its training data and code are not.

Example sentences

  1. Download the weights from the shared drive and load them into the evaluation script.

  2. They published the weights but not the training data.

Common collocations

  • model weights
  • load the weights
  • open weights
  • freeze the weights
  • pretrained weights
  • parameterA named input that a function or method accepts, listed in its definition. The actual value you pass in when you call it is called the argument.
  • neural networkA model made of many connected units arranged in layers, loosely inspired by the brain. Each connection has a weight that is adjusted during training.
  • checkpointA point in a level where the game saves the player's progress, so after failing or dying they start again from there instead of from the beginning.
  • quantizationStoring a model's weights, and sometimes its activations, with fewer bits, for example 8-bit or 4-bit numbers instead of 16-bit, to make it smaller and faster.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Machine Learning and Data Processing

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