> I had assumed model files were big matrices of numbers and some metadata perhaps
ONNX [1] is more or less this, but the challenge you immediately run into is models with custom layers/operators with their own inference logic - you either have to implement those operators in terms of the supported ops (not necessarily practical or viable) or provide the implementation of the operator to the runtime, putting you back at square one.
ONNX [1] is more or less this, but the challenge you immediately run into is models with custom layers/operators with their own inference logic - you either have to implement those operators in terms of the supported ops (not necessarily practical or viable) or provide the implementation of the operator to the runtime, putting you back at square one.
[1] https://onnx.ai/