What problem does it solve?
Ray Data solves slow, memory-bound data preprocessing and batch inference by distributing streaming dataset operations across CPU/GPU clusters.
Core Features & Use Cases
- Streaming execution for large datasets: Process datasets larger than RAM using lazy, block-based pipelines suitable for >100GB workloads.
- Distributed transformations: Apply fast vectorized batch transforms (map_batches), filtering, grouping, and custom aggregations for ETL and feature prep.
- Framework integration and multi-format I/O: Read/write Parquet/CSV/JSON/images and integrate with Ray Train alongside PyTorch and TensorFlow for scalable training-time ingestion.
Use this for a real scenario like multi-modal batch inference where you load images from object storage, run GPU-accelerated preprocessing, and write processed outputs back to Parquet for later training.
Quick Start
Use the ray-data skill to read Parquet data from an S3 path, apply a batch transformation that lowercases text fields, and stream the resulting batches for inspection.