shaun@isr.recruit.co.jp (Shaun Lawson) (12/07/90)
According to an article in the November 26th edition of the "Nikkei Shinbun" (the Japanese equivalent to the Wall Street Journal), Hitachi has developed the world's fastest general purpose neurocomputer. The learning speed is reported as 2,300 Million Weight Updates Per Second (MWUPS), approximately four times that of the Fujitsu neurocomputer which had a reported 587 MWUPS. It is constructed of eight 5 inch silicon wafers enclosed within a 30cm x 21cm x 23cm cabinet. Each wafer contains 144 neurons, making the total capacity 1,152 neurons. It is designed to be used in conjunction with a workstation. In the same article, two applications were announced. The first is for stock value prediction and the second is for signature verification. The stock value prediction application appears to accept the last 20 days price data for a given stock as input, and output a projection for the next 10 days. The signature verification is trained on 5 actual signatures, and verification is made based upon the pen pressure, and horizontal and vertical pen speeds. The company plans to commercialize the neurocomputer withing the next two years at a price of less than 100 million yen (about $770k at $1 = 130). Related articles: %A Kato, H. %A Yoshizawa, H %A Iciki, H. %A Asakawa, K. %T A Parallel Neurocomputer Architecture with Ring Registers %J Proceedings of the InfoJapan '90 Computer Conference %V 1 %P 233-240 %I Information Processing Society of Japan %C Tokyo %D 1990 %K Neurocomputer %A Herbst, K. %T Fujitsu Parallel Design Speeds Learning of Neurocomuters %J Supercomputing Review %V 3 %P 56-57 %I Supercomputing Review %C San Diego %D October 1990 %K Neurocomputer