neuron-request@HPLMS2.HPL.HP.COM ("Neuron-Digest Moderator Peter Marvit") (03/05/91)
Neuron Digest Monday, 4 Mar 1991 Volume 7 : Issue 12 Today's Topics: Neurosimulators Commercial Simulators Computists International A book on Self-Organization request for information on real time applications of NNs Re: Looking for Phoneme Data Send submissions, questions, address maintenance and requests for old issues to "neuron-request@hplabs.hp.com" or "{any backbone,uunet}!hplabs!neuron-request" Use "ftp" to get old issues from hplpm.hpl.hp.com (15.255.176.205). ------------------------------------------------------------ Subject: Neurosimulators From: MURRE%rulfsw.LeidenUniv.nl@BITNET.CC.CMU.EDU Date: Tue, 12 Feb 91 16:38:00 +0700 Dear connectionist researchers, We are compiling a list of neurosimulators for inclusion in a review paper. The table below presents the 45 simulators that we have been able to track down so far. We have not been able to find out all the details. We would, therefore, appreciate it when users or developers could fill us in on the white spots in the list (or point out any mistakes). Also, if anyone knows of other simulators that should be included, please, drop us a note. We would especially welcome any (pointers to) papers describing neurosimulators. This would enable us to refine and extend the list of features. Thanks! Jaap Murre Steven Kleynenberg E-mail: MURRE@HLERUL55.Bitnet Surface mail: Jacob M.J. Murre Unit of Experimental and Theoretical Psychology Leiden University P.O. Box 9555 2300 RB Leiden The Netherlands To save precious bytes, we have configured the table below in a 132 column format. It may be easier to send the file to a line printer, then to read it behind the terminal. (On a VAX use: set term /width=132.) TABLE: NEUROSIMULATORS Name Manufacturer Language Models Hardware Reference Price ($) =----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------- ADAPTICS Adaptic [AZEMA] ANNE Oregon Grad. Cent. HLL Intel hypercube [AZEMA] ANSE TRW TRW [AZEMA] ANSIM SAIC several IBM [COHEN] 495.00 ANSKIT SAIC several many [BARGA][ BYTE] ANSPEC SIAC HLL many IBM,MAC,SUN,VAX 995.00 AWARENESS Neural Systems IBM [BYTE] 275.00 AXON HNC HLL many HNC neurocomp. [AZEMA][ BYTE] 1950.00 BOSS [REGGIA] BRAIN SIMULATOR Abbot,Foster, & Hauser IBM 99.00 BRAINMAKER Cal.Scient.Software bp IBM [BYTE] 195.00 CABLE VAX [MILLER] CASENET Prolog [DOBBINS ] COGNITRON Cognitive Software Lisp many MAC,IBM [ZEITV][ BYTE] 600.00 CONE IBM Palo Alto HLL IBM [AZEMA] CONNECTIONS hopf IBM [BYTE] 87.00 CORTEX [REGGIA] DESIRE/NEUNET IBM [KORN] EXPLORENET 3000 HNC HLL many IBM,VAX [BYTE][C OHEN] GENESIS Neural Systems IBM [MILLER] 1095.00 GRADSIM Univ. of Penns. C several GRIFFIN Texas Instruments [AZEMA] HYPERBRAIN Neurix MAC [BYTE] 995.00 MACBRAIN Neurix many MAC [BYTE] 995.00 MACTIVATION Univ. of Colorado? METANET Leiden University HLL many IBM,VAX [MURRE] MIRROR 2 HLL several [REGGIA] N-NET AIWare C bp IBM,VAX [BYTE] 695.00 N1000 Nestor IBM,SUN [BYTE] 19000.00 N500 Nestor IBM [BYTE] NEMOSYS IBM RS/6000 [MILLER] NESTOR DEV. SYSTEM Nestor IBM,MAC 9950.00 NET [REGGIA] NETSET 2 HNC many IBM,SUN,VAX 19500.00 NETWURKZ Dair Computer IBM [BYTE] 79.95 NEURALWORKS NeuralWare HLL many IBM,MAC,SUN [BYTE][C OHEN] 1495.00 NEUROCLUSTERS VAX [AZMY] NEURON [MILLER] NEUROSHELL Ward Systems Group bp IBM [BYTE] 195.00 NEUROSOFT HNC NEUROSYM NeuroSym many IBM 179.00 NEURUN Dare Research bp IBM NN3 GMD Bonn HLL many [LINDEN] NNSIM [NIJHUIS ] OWL Olmsted & Watkins many IBM,MAC,SUN,VAX [BYTE] 1495.00 P3 UCSD HLL many Symbolics [ZIPSER] PABLO [REGGIA] PLATO/ARISTOTLE NeuralTech [AZEMA] PLEXI Symbolics Lisp bp,hopf Symbolics PREENS Nijmegen University HLL many SUN PYGMALION Esprit C many SUN,VAX [AZEMA] RCS Rochester University C many SUN [AZEMA] SFINX UCLA HLL [AZEMA] Explanation of abbreviations and terms: Languages: HLL = High Level Language (i.e., network definition language; if specific programming languages are mentioned networks can be defined using high level functions in these languages) Models: several = a fixed number of models is (and will be) supported; many = the systems can be (or will be) extended with new models; bp = backpropagation hopf = hopfield (if specific models are mentioned these are the only ones supported) References: see list below (We welcome any additional references.) [AZEMA] Azema-Barac, M., M. Heweston, M. Recce, J. Taylor, P. Treleaven, M. Vellasco (1990). Pygmalion, neural network progamming environment. [BARGA] Barga, R.S., R.B. Melton (1990). Framework for distributed artificial neural system simulation. Proceedings of the IJCNN-90-Washington DC, 2, 94-97. [BYTE] Byte (product listing) (1989). BYTE, 14(8), 244-245. [COHEN] Cohen, H. (1989). How useful are current neural network software tools? Neural Network Review, 3, 102-113. [DOBBINS] Dobbins, R.W., R.C. Eberhart (1990). Casenet, computer aided neural network generation tool. Proceedings of the IJCNN-90-Washington DC, 2, 122-125. [KORN] Korn, G.A. (1989). A new environment for interactive neural network experiments. Neural Networks, 2, 229-237. [LINDEN] Linden, A., Ch. Tietz (in prep.). Research and development software environment for modular adaptive systems. Technical Report NN3-1, GMD Birlinghoven, Sankt Augustin, Germany. [MILLER] Miller, J.P. (1990). Computer modelling at the single-neuron level. Nature, 347, 783-784. [MURRE] Murre, J.M.J., S.E. Kleynenberg (submitted). Extending the MetaNet Network Environment: process control and machine independence. [NIJHUIS] Nijhuis, J., L. Spaanenburg, F. Warkowski (1989). Structure and application of NNSIM: a general purpose neural network simulator. Microprocessing and Microprogramming, 27, 189-194. [REGGIA] Reggia, J.A., C.L. D'Autrechy, G.C. Sutton III, S.M. Goodall (1988). A general-purpose simulation environment of developing connectionist models. Simulation, 51, 5-19. [VIBERT] Vibert, J.F., N. Azmy (1990). Neuro_Clusters: A biological plausible neural networks simulator tool. [ZEITV] Zeitvogel, R.K. (1989). Cognitive Software's Cognitron 1.2 (review). Neural Network Review, 3, 11-16. [ZIPSER] Zipser, D., D.E. Rabin (1986). P3: a parallel network simulation system. In: D.E. Rumelhart, J.L. McClelland (1986). Parallel distributed processing. Volume 1. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. ------------------------------ Subject: Commercial Simulators From: Bill Mammel <CHRMWCM%engvms.unl.edu@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU> Date: Tue, 12 Feb 91 19:02:00 -0500 Here's a list of commercial neural network simulators that I have compiled. Each listing gives the company name, address, & phone and their product(s). Indented under each product is its hardware environment. Finally, there are two products listed at the end--I have only seen these referenced in the literature so I don't know exactly where to get them. All information is correct to my best knowledge. Product/Company inclusion is not an endorsement or recommendation. Neither is exclusion. Corrections or additions are welcome. If a product is not listed or is incorrect, please e-mail to me at "chrmwcm@engvms.unl.edu"-- Neural Network Software Simulators =---------------------------------- AI Ware, Inc. 11000 Cedar Avenue, Suite 212 (216) 421-2380 Cleveland, OH 44106 N-NET PCAT, VAX/VMS California Scientific Software 160 E. Montecito Avenue, Suite E (818) 355-1094 Sierra Madre, CA 91024 Brain Maker Professional 2.0 PCAT Cognitive Software, Inc. 703 East 30th Street (317) 924-9988 Indianapolis, IN 46205 Cognitron PCAT, Mac, transputers DAIR Computer Systems 3440 Kenneth Drive (415) 494-7081 Palo Alto, CA 94303 Net Wurkz PCAT HNC, Inc. 5501 Oberlin Drive (619) 546-8877 San Diego, CA 92121 ExploreNet 3000 MSDOS, Sun workstations Neural coprocessor boards Korn Industrial Consultants 6801 Opatas Street (602) 298-7054 Tucson, AZ 85745 Desire/NeuNet PCAT Nestor, Inc. 1 Richmond Square (401) 331-9640 Providence, RI 02906 NDS 1000 Neural Computer Systems Limited 79 Olney Road, Emberton (0) 234-713298 Olney, bucks, England MK465BU Neurun Neurun Light Neural coprocessor boards Neural Systems, Inc. 2827 West 43rd Avenue (604) 263-3667 Vancouver, BC V6N 3H9 Awareness Genesis PCAT NeuralWare, Inc. Penn Center West Building IV, Suite 227 (412) 787-8222 Pittsburgh, PA 15276 NeuralWorks Professional II Plus PCAT, Mac II, SE, Sun-3,4,386i, NeXT, transputers NeuralWorks Designer Pack PCAT, Sun NeuralWorks Explorer PCAT Neurix One Kendall Square, Suite 2200 (617) 577-1202 Cambridge, MA 02139 MacBrain MacIntosh Plus, SE, II SAIC 10260 Campus Point Drive (619) 546-6290 Mail Stop 71 San Diego, CA 92121 ANSim 2.1 PCAT The Software Tailors Co. 1295 N. Providence Road, Suite B103 (215) 565-4705 Media, PA 19063 Neural Network Simulation Program PCAT Ward Systems Group, Inc. 228 West Patrick Street (301) 662-7950 Frederick, MD 21701 NeuroShell PCAT NeuroBoard coprocessors FORTRAN-77 Neural Network Simulator. FORTRAN-77 Neural Network Simulator (F77NNS) User Guide. Mission Support Directorate, Mission Planning and Analysis Division, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX. COSMIC Program #MSC-21638. June, 1989. CaseNet as referenced in Eberhart, R.C., Dobbins, R.W., and Webber, W.R.S. CaseNet: A neural network tool for EEG waveform classification. Proceedings IEEE Symposium on Computer Based Medical Systems, Minneapolis, MN, 60-68, 1989. ------------------------------ Subject: Computists International From: Ken Laws <LAWS@ai.sri.com> Date: Tue, 26 Feb 91 22:54:02 -0800 *** PLEASE POST *** This is to announce Computists International, a new "networking" association for computer and information scientists. Hi! I'm Ken Laws If this announcement interests you, contact me at internet address laws@ai.sri.com. If you can't get through, my mail address is: Dr. Kenneth I. Laws; 4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; daytime phone (415) 493-7390. I'm back from two years at the National Science Foundation. I used to run AIList, and I miss it. Now I'm creating a broader service for anyone interested in information (or knowledge), software, databases, algorithms, or doing neat new things with computers. It's a career-oriented association for mutual mentoring about grant and funding sources, information channels, text and software publishing, tenure, career moves, institutions, consulting, business practices, home offices, software packages, taxes, entrepreneurial concerns, and the sociology of work. We can talk about algorithms, too, with a focus on applications. Toward that end, I'm going to edit and publish a weekly+ newsletter, The Computists' Communique. The Communique will be tightly edited, with carefully condensed news and commentary. Content will depend on your contributions, but I will filter, summarize, and generally act like an advice columnist. (Ann Landers?) I'll also suggest lines of discussion, collect "common knowledge" about academia and industry, and help track people and projects. As a bonus, I'll give members whatever behind-the-scenes career help I can. Alas, this won't be free. The charter membership fee for Computists will depend in part on how many people respond to this notice. The Communique itself will be free to all members, FOB Palo Alto; internet delivery incurs no additional charge. To encourage participation, there's a full money-back guarantee (excluding postage). Send me a reply to find out more. -- Ken Computists International and The Computists' Communique are service marks of Kenneth I. Laws. Membership in professional organizations may be a tax-deductible business expense. ------------------------------ Subject: A book on Self-Organization From: R14502%BBRBFU01.BITNET@BITNET.CC.CMU.EDU Date: Wed, 27 Feb 91 16:16:14 +0100 To all interested in the concept of Selforganization ------------------------------------------------------ The subject matter of selforganization has drawn a lot of attention from physicists, chemists, and theoretical biologists before becoming so popular with the Neural Network researches. Anybody interested in the field with few hours to spare may find the basics and typical examples of self-organization of complex systems in an elementary book which I wrote few years ago. The title is: "Molecules, Dynamics and Life: An introduction to self-organization of matter", Wiley, New York, 1986. A. Babloyantz University of Brussels " Dr. Babloyantz has produced an engaging and earnest introduction to the field of self-organization in chemical and biological systems. Dr. Babloyantz proves herself to be a pleasant, practical and reliable guide to new territory which is still largely uncharted and inhospitable to tourists. Her style falls halfway between that found in a popular account and that of a txtbook. She tells her story in a chatty, down-to-earth way, while also giving serious scientific consideration to fundamental issues of the self-organization of matter." (Nature) " The issue of self-organization has at the center of a larger theoretical revolution in physics - the belief that the fundamental laws of nature are irreversible and random, rather than determinstic and reversible. The concepts and processes underlying this new way of thinking are formidable. Molecules, Dynamics and Life makes these concepts and processes accessible, for the first time, to students and researchers in physics, chemistry, biology, and the social sciences." (Physics Briefs) " In Molecules, Dynamics and Life, Dr. Agnes Babloyantz develops a clear and easy to read presentation of this developing field of knowledge. Because only a few advanced research treatises are available so far, this book is especially welcomed. It offers an excellent introduction to an interdisciplinary domain, involving physics and biology, chemistry and mathematics. Obviously, putting together all these topics and making them readable to a large audience was really a challenge." (Biosystem's) " With this fine book Agnessa Babloyantz has provided a successful and welcome summary of what has been accomplished so far in the study of self-organization of matter according to the Prigogine school in Brussels. Dr. Babloyantz's book can be highly recommended to all those interested in self-organization in the fields of chemistry and biochemistry." (Bull. Math. Biology) ------------------------------ Subject: request for information on real time applications of NNs From: Paulo V Rocha <P.Rocha@cs.ucl.ac.uk> Date: Thu, 28 Feb 91 10:26:46 +0000 I am benchmarking a neurocomputer and need data on the typical load generated by real-time, real-world NNs applications. Virtually any model, and any application details are welcomed but I suppose the heaviest loads are generated by speech processing and signal (radar?) and image processing. Am I right? I would appreciate any information or pointers to litterature containing these data. This is more or less a case of life or death to my Thesis. :-) P. +-----------------------------+---------------------------------------------+ Paulo Valverde de L. P. Rocha | JANET:procha@uk.ac.ucl.cs Department of Computer Science| BITNET:procha%uk.ac.ucl.cs@UKACRL University College London |Internet:procha%cs.ucl.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Gower Street | ARPANet:procha@cs.ucl.ac.uk London WC1E 6BT | UUCP:...!mcvax!ukc!ucl-cs!procha England | tel: +44 (071) 387 7050 x 3719 | fax: +44 (071) 387 1397 +-----------------------------+---------------------------------------------+ ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Looking for Phoneme Data From: Giorgos Bebis <bebis@csi.forth.gr> Date: Thu, 28 Feb 91 15:56:49 +0200 In comp.ai.neural-nets you write: >I am looking for speech data that I can use as input into a phoneme >recognition neural network. I am working on alternative neural network >models that have improved learning rates in terms of time and I need to >test these algorithms with speech data used with traditional >implementations of neural network based speech recognition packages. Any >information on where and how to get this speech input data would be >greatly appreciated. Thanks. >Gunhan H. Tatman >Computer Engineering Dept. >The University of South Carolina >Columbia, SC 29201 >e-mail: gunhan@otis.hssc.scarolina.edu > (gunhan@129.252.1.2) I suggest you to look at the benchmark's collection of Scott Fahlman. Here is a message that he has post before some time : George Bebis, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Crete, PO BOX 1470, Iraklion, Crete, GREECE E-mail : bebis@csi.forth.gr =-----------------------------------------------------------------------------= Subject: CMU Benchmark collection From: Scott.Fahlman@SEF1.SLISP.CS.CMU.EDU Date: Mon, 03 Sep 90 22:15:32 -0400 [[ Editor's Note: My thanks to Scott for this complete and thoughtful reply. The subject of benchmarking arise periodically, hence my last reference to Scott's valient efforts. As always, I assume readers will scan this message carefully and follow the directions. If anyone volunteers to be an additional repository for the files, especially if they are willing to make up tapes or diskettes and/or provide UUCP access, please contact me or Scott. -PM ]] Since the topic of the CMU benchmark collection was raised here, let me post this information as a way of avoiding dozens of individual questions and answers. The benchmark collection is available via internet FTP -- directions for how to access the collection are included below. I have hesitated to advertise it to this newsgroup because so many people out on usenet have no FTP access. As a rule, I don't have time to E-mail these files to individuals (some are quite large and would have to be chopped up), and we certainly are not in a position to send out copies on mag tape or floppy disk. However, any of you who are able to access this material via FTP are welcome to do so. I set up the collection a couple of years ago as part of my own empirical research on neural network learning algorithms. An important question is how to measure one algorithm against another, even when they deal with problem domains of similar size and shape. The typical paper in this field describes some new algorithm and then presents an experiment or two comparing the new algorithm vs. vanilla backprop. Unfortunately, no two researchers seem to run the same problem in the same way. Not surprisingly, everyone beats backprop by at least an order of magnitude, and usually more. Of course, backprop is very sensitive to the choice of training parameters, so with a new problem there is always the question of whether backprop was given a fair chance. The more interesting question of how a new algorithm stacks up against other post-backprop algorithms is seldom addressed at all. So my goal has been to collect a variety of benchmark problems, including some small, artificial ones (e.g. parity) and some larger, more realistic ones (e.g. nettalk). For each of these, the collection contains a problem description, data sets for testing and training (or an algorithm for generating the same), and a summary of results that people have obtained on the problem in question using various algorithms. These results make it possible for people with new algorithms to compare them against the best results reported to date, and not just against vanilla backprop. This material is provided solely for the benfit of researchers; we have no desire to become the "Guiness Book of World Records" for neural networks. Since my goal is to compare learning algorithms, not machines, these results are expressed in epochs or floating-point operations rather than "seconds on a Cray Y/MP" or whatever. There is a mailing list for frequent users of this collection and other interested in benchmarking issues. It is named "nn-bench@cs.cmu.edu" (Internet address). Mail to this address goes to a couple of hundred places worldwide, so "add me" requests and other administrative messages should not go there. Instead they should go to "nn-bench-request@cs.cmu.edu". Unfortunately, not too many people have contributed problems to this collection, and I have been too busy with other things to spend a lot of time promoting this effort and combing the literature for good problems. Consequently, the collection and the mailing list have been dormant of late. I am enclosing a list of files currently in the collection. I have a couple of other data sets that need some work to get them into usable form. I hope to find some time for this in the near future, but that is hard to predict. If someone with lots of time and energy, lots of online file storage, and good connections to the Internet wants to take over this effort and run with it, please contact me and we can discuss this. Scott Fahlman School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 Internet: fahlman@cs.cmu.edu ....................................................................... Current contents of Neural Net Benchmark directory. First number is file size in bytes. 8094 Mar 15 1989 FORMAT 11778 Aug 13 1989 GLOSSARY 13704 Dec 5 1989 nettalk 541269 Jul 15 17:55 nettalk.data 7382 Oct 16 1989 nettalk.list 5570 Apr 16 1989 parity 1911 Oct 16 1989 protein 14586 Aug 22 1989 protein.test 73489 Aug 22 1989 protein.train 5872 Dec 23 1989 sonar 49217 Dec 23 1989 sonar.mines 43052 Dec 23 1989 sonar.rocks 7103 Feb 27 22:20 two-spirals 16245 Mar 4 23:01 vowel 61542 Apr 23 1989 vowel.data 6197 Apr 15 1989 xor ....................................................................... FTP access instructions: For people (at CMU, MIT, and soon some other places) with access to the Andrew File System (AFS), you can access the files directly from directory "/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/connect/bench". This file system uses the same syntactic conventions as BSD Unix: case sensitive names, slashes for subdirectories, no version numbers, etc. The protection scheme is a bit different, but that shouldn't matter to people just trying to read these files. For people accessing these files via FTP: 1. Create an FTP connection from wherever you are to machine "pt.cs.cmu.edu". The internet address of this machine is 128.2.254.155, for those who need it. 2. Log in as user "anonymous" with no password. You may see an error message that says "filenames may not have /.. in them" or something like that. Just ignore it. 3. Change remote directory to "/afs/cs/project/connect/bench". Any subdirectories of this one should also be accessible. Parent directories should not be. 4. At this point FTP should be able to get a listing of files in this directory and fetch the ones you want. 5. The directory "/afs/cs/project/connect/code" contains public-domain programs implementing the Quickprop and Cascade-Correlation algorithms, among other things. Access it in the same way. I've tested this access method, but it's still possible that some of our ever vigilant protection demons will interfere with access from out in net-land. If you try to access this directory by FTP and have trouble, please contact me. The exact FTP commands you use to change directories, list files, etc., will vary from one version of FTP to another. =---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Good luck, Bye, George. ------------------------------ End of Neuron Digest [Volume 7 Issue 12] ****************************************