Neural Networks And Systolic Array Design

Neural networks (NNs) and systolic arrays (SAs) have many similar features. This volume describes, in a unified way, the basic concepts, theories and characteristic features of integrating or formulating different facets of NNs and SAs, as well as presents recent developments and significant applications. The articles, written by experts from all over the world, demonstrate the various ways this integration can be made to efficiently design methodologies, algorithms and architectures, and also implementations, for NN applications. The book will be useful to graduate students and researchers in many related areas, not only as a reference book but also as a textbook for some parts of the curriculum. It will also benefit researchers and practitioners in industry and R&D laboratories who are working in the fields of system design, VLSI, parallel processing, neural networks, and vision.

This is Volume III of a three volume set constituting the refereed proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Neural Networks, ISNN 2006. 616 revised papers are organized in topical sections on neurobiological analysis, theoretical analysis, neurodynamic optimization, learning algorithms, model design, kernel methods, data preprocessing, pattern classification, computer vision, image and signal processing, system modeling, robotic systems, transportation systems, communication networks, information security, fault detection, financial analysis, bioinformatics, biomedical and industrial applications, and more.

The early era of neural network hardware design (starting at 1985) was mainly technology driven. Designers used almost exclusively analog signal processing concepts for the recall mode. Learning was deemed not to cause a problem because the number of implementable synapses was still so low that the determination of weights and thresholds could be left to conventional computers. Instead, designers tried to directly map neural parallelity into hardware. The architectural concepts were accordingly simple and produced the so called interconnection problem which, in turn, made many engineers believe it could be solved by optical implementation in adequate fashion only. Furthermore, the inherent fault-tolerance and limited computation accuracy of neural networks were claimed to justify that little effort is to be spend on careful design, but most effort be put on technology issues. As a result, it was almost impossible to predict whether an electronic neural network would function in the way it was simulated to do. This limited the use of the first neuro-chips for further experimentation, not to mention that real-world applications called for much more synapses than could be implemented on a single chip at that time. Meanwhile matters have matured. It is recognized that isolated definition of the effort of analog multiplication, for instance, would be just as inappropriate on the part ofthe chip designer as determination of the weights by simulation, without allowing for the computing accuracy that can be achieved, on the part of the user.

This collection of recent studies spans a range of computational intelligence applications, emphasizing their application to challenging real-world problems. Covers Intelligent agent-based algorithms, Hybrid intelligent systems, Machine learning and more.

Content Description #Includes bibliographical references and index.

During the 1980s and early 1990s there was signi?cant work in the design and implementation of hardware neurocomputers. Nevertheless, most of these efforts may be judged to have been unsuccessful: at no time have have ha- ware neurocomputers been in wide use. This lack of success may be largely attributed to the fact that earlier work was almost entirely aimed at developing custom neurocomputers, based on ASIC technology, but for such niche - eas this technology was never suf?ciently developed or competitive enough to justify large-scale adoption. On the other hand, gate-arrays of the period m- tioned were never large enough nor fast enough for serious arti?cial-neur- network (ANN) applications. But technology has now improved: the capacity and performance of current FPGAs are such that they present a much more realistic alternative. Consequently neurocomputers based on FPGAs are now a much more practical proposition than they have been in the past. This book summarizes some work towards this goal and consists of 12 papers that were selected, after review, from a number of submissions. The book is nominally divided into three parts: Chapters 1 through 4 deal with foundational issues; Chapters 5 through 11 deal with a variety of implementations; and Chapter 12 looks at the lessons learned from a large-scale project and also reconsiders design issues in light of current and future technology.