Path: utzoo!censor!hugh
From: hugh@censor.UUCP (Hugh D. Gamble)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: blitting a neural net.
Summary: They tell me no.
Keywords: Neural nets, blitter, life, pickled cumquats
Message-ID: <610@censor.UUCP>
Date: 19 May 89 16:25:06 GMT
References: <1082@altos86.UUCP> <10650@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> <3029@cps3xx.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Canada, Business Development, Toronto
Lines: 30

In article <3029@cps3xx.UUCP>, golden@cps3xx.UUCP (golden james) writes:
> What about using the blitter to implement a neural network, since they
> usually suffer from hundreds of simple integer calculations?  Could you
> simply "blit" the network recursively to obtain a result?
> 
> Mike Golden
> Physiology Undergraduate
> Michigan State University

That's something I thought of just after I discovered Tom's nifty keen
life program that mapped so beautifully on to the blitter instructions.
So I asked a few experts and they either said no without thinking,
or thought for a second before saying the same thing.

I still suspect that you could set up an algorithm that would use the
blitter in combination with the CPU to acheive better results than
you would get from just using the CPU, but it would take some thinking.

I don't think it would be a particularly optimal fit.  Especially if
you had an '030 & 882 or a gaggle of transputers in your amiga, I
don't think the effort required to use the blitter would be worth it.
Besides, then you couldn't play space spuds at the same time your
Amiga was running a neural net program to decide for you whether you
should watch Oprah or Giraldo :-)

-- 
Hugh D. Gamble (416) 581-4354 (wk), 267-6159 (hm) (Std. Disclaimers)
hugh@censor, kink!hugh@censor
# It may be true that no man is an island,
# but I make a darn good peninsula.