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From: tom@asi.com (Tom Baker)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.neural-nets
Subject: Finite word length BP
Message-ID: <894@adaptive.UUCP>
Date: 10 Jan 91 16:48:57 GMT
Sender: tom@adaptive.UUCP
Reply-To: tom@asi.com (Tom Baker)
Organization: Adaptive Solutions Inc., Portland OR
Lines: 26


Yun-Shu Peter Chiou (yunshu@eng.umd.edu) writes:
> Does anyone out there have any references or have done any works
> on the effects of finite word length arithmetic on Back-Propagation.

I have done a lot of work with BP using limited precision
calculations.  My masters thesis was on the subject, and last summer
Jordan Holt worked with us to run a lot of benchmark data on our
limited precision simulator.  We are submitting a paper on Jordan's
results to IJCNN '91 in Seattle.

We use 16 bit weights, and 8 bit inputs and outputs.  We have found
that this representation does as well as floating point for most of
the data sets that we have tried.  I have also seen several other
papers where 16 bit weights were used successfully.

I am also trying to collect a bibliography on limited precision.  I
would like to see the references that you get.  I do not have all of
the references that I have in a form that can be sent out.  I will
post them soon.  I would like to keep in touch with the people that
are doing research in this area.

Thomas Baker                    INTERNET: tom@asi.com  
Adaptive Solutions, Inc.	UUCP:  (uunet,ogicse)!adaptive!tom
1400 N.W. Compton Drive, Suite 340      
Beaverton, Oregon 97006