Tech Reports available

[mclennan%MACLENNAN.CS.UTK.EDU@cs.utk.edu]

                *** DO NOT FORWARD TO ANY OTHER LISTS ***

The following two tech reports are available (abstracts are
attached):
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Bruce J. MacLennan
Continuous Computation:  Taking Massive Parallelism Seriously
Univ. of Tennessee Computer Science Dept. Tech. Report CS-89-83,
June 1989, 13 pages.
This is based on poster presentation at Los Alamos National
Laboratory Center for Nonlinear Studies 9th Annual International
Conference, Emergent Computation, Los Alamos, NM, May 22-26,
1989.
A latex version is available at
cheops.cis.ohio-state.edu in pub/neuroprose:
maclennan.contin_comp.tex
------------------------------------------------------------
Bruce J. MacLennan
Outline of a Theory of Massively Parallel Analog Computation
Univ. of Tennessee Computer Science Dept. Tech. Report CS-89-84,
June 1989, 23 pages.
This is based on a poster presentation at IJCNN '89.
As this report contains non-postscript art, a latex version is not available.
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Hardcopy versions of both reports are available from:

     Betsy Holleman, Librarian
     Department of Computer Science
     University of Tennessee
     Knoxville, TN 37996-1301
                 or
     library at cs.utk.edu

Or write to me at the same address (maclennan at cs.utk.edu).
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                            ABSTRACTS

Since the contents of the two reports are very similar, one
abstract covers both.

We present an overview of the theory of Field Computation:  mas-
sively parallel analog computation in which the number of pro-
cessing elements is so large that it may be considered a continu-
ous quantity.  We pursue this idea for a number of reasons.
First, skillful behavior seems to require significant neural
mass.  Second, we are interested in computers, such as optical
computers and molecular computers, for which the number of pro-
cessing elements is effectively continuous.  Third, continuous
mathematics is generally easier than discrete mathematics.  And
fourth, we want to encourage a new style of thinking about paral-
lelism.  Currently, we try to apply to parallel machines the
thought habits we have acquired from thinking about sequential
machines.  This strategy works fairly well when the degree of
parallelism is low, but it will not scale up.  One cannot think
individually about the 10^20 processors of a molecular computer.
Rather than postpone the inevitable, we think that it's time to
develop a theoretical framework for understanding massively
parallel analog computers.  The principal goal of this report is
to outline such a theory.

Both reports discuss the basic concept of field computation and
the basic principles of universal (general purpose) field comput-
ers.  In addition, CS-89-83 discusses representation of consti-
tuent structure, learning, and field computation versions of
simulated annealing and a kind of genetic algorithm.  CS-89-84
discusses ways of avoiding fields of high dimension, and imple-
mentation of field computations in terms of neurons with conjunc-
tive synapses.