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[gk@thp.Uni-Koeln.DE]

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     Neural Network Simulations on the European Teraflop Computer

Dear Colleagues,

Scientist in Europe are actively seeking to build a Teraflop computer, 
i.e., a computer which can perform a million million floating point 
operations per second. In the USA there is a similar effort, however,
the use of that machine is to be limited to the small group of physicist
working on problems in Lattice Gauge Theory. The Steering Committee of the
European Teraflop Initiative has decided to take a much broader view of
scientific computing, and at its Geneva meeting of May 16 asked for 
proposals from other scientific fields. In particular, they asked if the 
group of researchers working under the broad heading of "neural networks" 
would be interested in using such a machine. Now, the current time scale for 
building this machine with the speed and memory of a 1000 Crays is 3-5 years,
however, the architecture, which is not yet decided upon, will be influenced
by the preliminary proposals put forward in the next few months. 

And so my question is, do we need Teraflop Computers for  
``neural network '' research? In particular: 

1) Who wants later (if at all) do simulations on such a machine?

2) Who wants to cooperate in the planning of the simulations ?

3) Which models and problems should be selected (biological systems or 
   applications oriented problems)?

4) What types of algorithms would such simulations require?

5) Should we drop this plan because of competition in the same simulations 
   from: (i) special purpose computers, (ii) ``secret'' industrial 
   research, ...?

Presumably the project would require a long planning period, heavy 
competition from other fields of research, and the willingness to program 
in a language fitted to the computer and not to us. 

Please send me your comments on these questions, preferably by e-mail, 
if you are interested. Please pass this announcement on to other 
researchers. 

Yours sincerely

Gregory Kohring 
Institute for Theoretical Physics, 
Cologne University,
D-5000 Koln 41, 
Germany, 
fax +49 221 470 5159 
e-mail: gk at thp.uni-koeln.de

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