[comp.ai.neural-nets] Any Comments on Commerical Simulators

plonski@primrose.Aero.Org (Mike Plonski) (09/06/89)

I am interested in purchasing a Neural Network Simulator for my Sun
workstation.
At the last IJCNN, I was most impressed by the NeuralWorks Professional
II package.  However, I tried this package on a friend's SUN and found the
documentation to be quite poor and the online help to be worse.  It seems to 
have been a nice PC package that was ported to the SUN, but the online help
files still gave you directions for the PC version.  In any case I am expanding
my search so consider other Neural Net Packages.  I am looking for software
only simulators in the under $5K range (the lower the better) that run on a
SUN workstation.

Any comments from packages that you may have used or
heard about will be greatly appreciated.  Comments on things like product
support, documentation, flexibility (can the dynamics, learning rules,etc
be modified), number of models, user interface, I/O facilities are desired. 
Is the network designed with a mouse, menu, text files, or a combination ?
Comments on the Hecht-Nielsen products, Neurosoft, User Interface Subroutine 
Library, Netset would be especially useful.

I have currently been using the public domain Rochestor Connectionist
Simulator.  This simulator is somewhat similiar to the Hecht Neilsen Axon
Language.  You can construct any network you want using C-code and their
subroutines and display the network operation using their graphical interface.
The problem is that there is no model library so that you have to implement 
each model yourself.  I am looking for a commerical package that has a 
large set of models.

Please send your comments directly to me as I have to make a decision
in the next week or so (use it or lose it year end money).  I will post
a summary to this newsgroup.  We have been having some problems with our
net connection, so if the mail gets bounced back, please try sending to
@brl.mil:plonski@aero.org

Thank You 
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.   . .__.                             The opinions expressed herin are soley
|\./| !__!       Michael Plonski       those of the author and do not represent
|   | |         "plonski@aero.org"     those of The Aerospace Corporation.
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