Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cwjcc!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnewsi!fiesta
From: fiesta@cbnewsi.ATT.COM (eric.c.beck)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: SPICE on personal computers
Summary: not the way to go for Neural nets
Message-ID: <320@cbnewsi.ATT.COM>
Date: 22 Jun 89 21:58:10 GMT
References: <19546@cup.portal.com>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 22

The adverts for Intusoft's $95 spice have also caught my eye.  If I remember
correctly, though, the number of simulated nodes in the PC version is
severely limited.  All but the simplest neural networks you'd want to
play with would exceed the node limit of the simulator.  Also, the level
of simulation provided by SPICE is far more detailed than what is required
for interesting neural net simulation.  Why waste all those CPU cycles on
KCL and KVL?

Pick a compiler and do it in software on your PC.  I wrote a C program about
4 years ago based on a Hopfield net.  It could be taught names which could
then be retrieved inspite of mispellings, juxtapositioned letters, etc.  As
I recall the program was not that long - say a hundred lines or so of
Microsoft C, most of it input and output formating. 

Concerning Intusoft SPICE - anybody use it?  Does it come with a library
(off the shelf transistors, fets, etc), or must one write their own
models? 

Eric Beck
homxb!fiesta
AT&T Bell Labs
Holmdel, NJ