ncnn

ncnn is a high-performance neural network inference framework optimized for mobile and embedded platforms, developed and open-sourced by Tencent.

Unlike training frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow), ncnn is inference-only — it runs already-trained models efficiently on resource-constrained devices, with no third-party dependencies and hand-optimized implementations for ARM CPUs, making it fast on phones and IoT hardware where a full ML framework would be too heavy.

Used by mobile app developers deploying computer vision or other ML features (image classification, pose detection, style transfer) on-device rather than sending data to a server for inference.