Limited Precision Neural Network Simulations

[Tom Baker]

I was encouraged by the discussion of limited precision simulations
during the NIPS VLSI post-conference workshop.  From the feedback that
I received during my presentation, it seemed as though many of the
audience had tried limited precision simulations on their own.
Unfortunately, I was not able to get specific details on their work,
or get anybody's name and address.  I have read several papers of
researchers that have used sixteen bit weights for back propagation,
but I have not seen many papers about using less precision.  I would
like to hear about the experiences of other researchers that have
tried to simulate neural networks with low precision calculations, as
well as get any paper references that you may have.  Let me know about
any tricks or hacks that you have used to get non-floating point
simulators to work.  I will collect a bibliography and a separate list
of techniques that others have tried.  I will post the results to the
net, and continue to keep the bibliography as new papers are
published.  I would like to keep in touch with the people that are
doing research in this area.


Thomas Baker                    INTERNET: tom at asi.com  
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