No subject

[Shawn Lockery]

Several months ago I asked about canned backprop simulators.
At long last, here is the result of my query:

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Barak Pearlmutter has written a dynamical backprop simulator.  A
version of his program that solves a toy problem and that is readily
modifiable is available by anonymous ftp from helmholtz.sdsc.edu.  The
directory is pub/ and the filename is pearlmutter.tar
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Yoshiro Miyata (miyata at dendrite.colorado.edu) has written an excellent
public domain connectionist simulator with a nice X windows or Sun
View interface.  It is called SunNet. He provides a pretty easy to
learn "general" definition language so a user can experiment with
quite varied back-prop and non-conventional architectures.  Examples
are provided of backpropagation, boltzmann learning, and others.
Source code is available by anonymous ftp from boulder.  Look for
SunNet5.5.tar.Z at boulder.colorado.edu.

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Yan Le Cun (Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto,
Toronto, Ontario, M5S 1A4, Canado) has written a commercial simulator
called SN /2 that is powerful and well documented.
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The Rochester Connectionist Simulator (RCS) is obtainable by anonymous
ftp from cs.rochester.edu.  You will find the code in the directory pub/simulator.

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The speech group at Oregon Graduate Institute has written a
conjugate-gradient optimization program called OPT to train fully
connected feed-forward networks.  It is available by anonymous ftp
from cse.ogi.edu.  The code is in the directory pub/speech.  Copy the
file opt.tar.  You will need to use the unix "tar" command to process
the file once you have it on your computer.
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For the Macintosh, there is the commercial program called MacBrain
(Neuronics, Inc., ! Kendall Square #2200, Cambridge, MA 02139).  It
has the usual Macintosh bells and whitsles and costs $400.
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For the Macintosh, there is a public domain program called
Mactivation.  Mactivation version 3.3 is available via anonymous ftp on
alumni.Colorado.EDU (internet address 128.138.240.32) 
The file is in /pub and is called mactivation.3.3.sit.hqx
 Mactivation is an introductory neural network simulator which runs on
all Apple Macintosh computers. A graphical interface provides direct
access to units, connections, and patterns. Basic concepts of network
operations can be explored, with many low level parameters available
for modification. Back-propagation is not supported (coming in 4.0)
A user's manual containing an introduction to connectionist networks
and program documentation is included. The ftp version includes a 
plain text file and an MS Word version with nice graphics and footnotes. 
The program may be freely copied, including for classroom distribution.
for version 4.0.  You can also get a copy by mail.  Send $5 to Mike
Kranzdorf, Box 1379, Nederland, C0 80466-1379.
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For 386 based PC's, you may purchase ExploreNet from HNC, 5501 Oberlin
Drive, San Diego, CA 92121.  You don't get source code for your $750,
but it's powerful and flexible.
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For IBM PC's, there is a disk that comes along with the third volume
of the PDP books (Parallel Distributed Processing, Rumelhart,
McClelland and the PDP Research Group, MIT Press, 1986 .  You get lots
of source code, and the third volume itself is a nice manual.
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