A transformation strategy for implementing distributed, multilayer feedforward neural networks: Backpropagation transformation

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Most artificial neural networks (ANNs) have a fixed topology during learning, and often suffer from a number of shortcomings as a result. Variations of ANNs that use dynamic topologies have shown ability to overcome many of these problems. This paper introduces location-independent transformations (LITs) as a general strategy for implementing distributed feed forward networks that use dynamic topologies (dynamic ANNs) efficiently in parallel hardware. A LIT creates a set of location-independent nodes, where each node computes its part of the network output independent of other nodes, using local information. This type of transformation allows efficient support for adding and deleting nodes dynamically during learning. In particular, this paper presents a LIT that supports both the standard (static) multilayer backpropagation network, and backpropagation with dynamic extensions. The complexity of both learning and execution algorithms is O( q( Nlog M)) for a single pattern, where q is the number of weight layers in the original network, N the number of nodes in the widest node layer in the original network, and M is the number of nodes in the transformed network (which is linear in the number hidden nodes in the original network). This paper extends previous work with 2-weight-layer backpropagation networks.