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+NERV Toolkit
+============
+
+NOTE: This readme is in-progress.
+
+Installation
+------------
+First, make sure you have at least one implementation of BLAS and CUDA installed
+on your computer.
+
+- Checkout NERV:
+  
+  ::
+
+    bash
+    git clone https://speechlab.sjtu.edu.cn/gitlab/Nerv-SJTU/nerv.git
+
+- Checkout submodules (luajit, luarocks, Penlight, etc.):
+
+  ::
+
+    cd nerv
+    git submodule init && git submodule update
+
+- Build NERV: you can specify either ``mkl`` or ``atlas`` to ``BLAS_TYPE``.
+  ``BLAS_BASE`` is the directory containing BLAS ``.so`` files. By default,
+  ``atlas`` is used for ``BLAS_TYPE``, ``/usr/lib/`` is used for ``BLAS_BASE``,
+  and ``/usr/local/cuda`` is used for ``CUDA_BASE``.
+
+  ::
+
+    # an example for compiling on SJTU Speechlab major cluster
+    make BLAS_TYPE=mkl BLAS_BASE=/home/intel/mkl/lib/intel64/ CUDA_BASE=/usr/lib/cuda
+
+- To include some new features (e.g. ``atomicCAS`` in CUDA), add corresponding flags to
+  ``NERV_FEAT`` (e.g. ``NERV_FEAT=-D__NERV_FUTURE_CUDA_7``) while making:
+
+  ::
+
+    make NERV_FEAT=-D__NERV_FUTURE_CUDA_7 BLAS_TYPE=mkl BLAS_BASE=/home/intel/mkl/lib/intel64/ CUDA_BASE=/usr/lib/cuda
+
+- For speech tasks, you need to install related lua rocks (Lua packages):
+
+  ::
+
+    # checkout speech repository to local directory nerv/speech (suppose you're
+    # still at the root directory of NERV repo)
+    git clone https://speechlab.sjtu.edu.cn/gitlab/Nerv-SJTU/nerv-speech.git speech
+    # build and install HTK I/O support, Kaldi I/O support, Kaldi decoding support, etc.
+    make speech
+
+Example & Tutorial
+------------------
+For speech tasks, please refer to ``tutorial/`` in ``nerv-speech`` repository.
+
+Contribution
+------------
+The basic rule is simple: just fork the original repository, then create a pull
+request (merge request) to the administrator of the project. If you want to fix
+any bugs in existing code, don't hesitate to create a pull (merge) request to
+the repository with clear and detailed analysis of the problem. If you want to
+add additional task-specific functionalities (modules) for speech to NERV,
+please create a luarocks-compliant package and also a pull (merge) request to
+the ``nerv-speech`` repository instead of ``nerv``.