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Getting Started with JAX

Chapter 1: Introduction to JAX

Core Design Philosophy: Function Transformations

Installation and Setup

Working with JAX Arrays

Device Management: CPU, GPU, TPU

Practice: Basic Array Operations

Quiz for Chapter 1

Chapter 2: Accelerating Functions with JIT Compilation

The Need for Speed: Why Compile?

Introducing jax.jit

How JIT Works: Tracing and Compilation

Python Control Flow and jit

Static vs Traced Values

Common Challenges with jit

Hands-on Practical: Applying jit

Quiz for Chapter 2

Chapter 3: Automatic Differentiation with grad

Understanding Gradients

Introducing jax.grad

How Autodiff Works: Reverse Mode

Differentiating with Respect to Arguments

Higher-Order Derivatives (grad of grad)

Value and Gradient (jax.value_and_grad)

Differentiation and Control Flow

Limitations and Considerations

Hands-on Practical: Computing Gradients

Quiz for Chapter 3

Chapter 4: Automatic Vectorization with vmap

The Concept of Vectorization

Introducing jax.vmap

Mapping over Specific Arguments (in_axes, out_axes)

Handling Multiple Batched Arguments

Combining vmap with jit and grad

Performance Considerations for vmap

Hands-on Practical: Vectorizing Functions

Quiz for Chapter 4

Chapter 5: Parallelization Across Devices with pmap

Introduction to Data Parallelism (SPMD)

Introducing jax.pmap

Mapping Data to Devices (in_axes, out_axes)

Device Meshes and Axis Names

Collective Operations (lax.psum, lax.pmean, etc.)

Combining pmap with other Transformations

Debugging pmapped Functions

Hands-on Practical: Parallel Computation

Quiz for Chapter 5

Chapter 6: Managing State in JAX

Functional Purity and Side Effects

The Challenge of State in Functional Code

Pattern: Explicit State Passing

Using PyTrees for Structured State

Example: Stateful Counter

Example: Simple Optimizer State

Combining State Management with Transformations

Practice: Implementing Stateful Functions

Quiz for Chapter 6

Value and Gradient (`jax.value_and_grad`)

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References

jax.value_and_grad, JAX Core Developers, 2024 - Official documentation for the jax.value_and_grad function, detailing its usage and parameters.
Evaluating Derivatives: Principles and Techniques of Algorithmic Differentiation, Andreas Griewank, Andrea Walther, 2008 (SIAM) DOI: 10.1137/1.9780898717765 - A classic text on automatic differentiation, covering the theoretical underpinnings of techniques like reverse-mode AD that jax.value_and_grad utilizes for efficient combined value and gradient computation.
Deep Learning, Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, and Aaron Courville, 2016 (MIT Press) - Chapter 6 'Deep Feedforward Networks' and Chapter 8 'Optimization for Training Deep Models' explain backpropagation and gradient-based optimization, which are the primary applications where functions like jax.value_and_grad are used to obtain loss and gradients.

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