Hi Walter,
No reason to convince you. I did last year some experiments with OpenCv.js, which is a Javascript transpiled version of OpenCv (C++). And it was indeed terrible slow.
But you can compile the Javascript to asm or even better to wasm, see a short explanation here. Summarized you create some kind of Javascript bytecode that will run much faster. Check out this nice demo you can see the enormous speed differences between - running OpenCv.js in - Javascript, asm en wasm!!
But I will not argument that C++ is much better in performance! It just a pain in the ass to get the application installed, and I think much of our users won't even survive the installation procedures and the errors during compilation phase ... Therefore it would be nice to have something in Node-RED that can be installed automatically as a dependency.
Based on your question I have been searching in the tfjs-node repository, but it seems to be that Tensorflow.js is a handwritten Javascript library (i.e. not compiled starting from their C++ version). So no asm or wasm!!
In the faq there is a section about performance:
In our experience, for inference, TensorFlow.js with WebGL is 1.5-2x slower than TensorFlow Python with AVX. For training, we have seen small models train faster in the browser and large models train up to 10-15x slower in the browser, compared to TensorFlow Python with AVX.
Bart
