Hardware prototypes of a Boolean neural network and the simulated annealing optimization method.

Abstract

Boolean Neural Network is a neural network that operates with binary weight values of "1" and "0". Otherwise it is formally analogous to the Multilayer Perceptron (MLP). Simulated Annealing is a stochastic optimization methods that is suitable for performing nonlinear multivariable optimization tasks. Training a Boolean Neural Network is a well-suited problem to this algorithm. However, the Simulated Annealing method is computationally heavy, which makes the training procedure slow. The training speed can be improved by using custom designed hardware for the whole system including the optimization method and the neural network. Hardware prototypes of a Boolean Neural Network and the Simulated Annealing optimization method have been designed using discrete components. The Boolean Neural Network implementation is basically a dynamically configurable feedforward network of Boolean logic gates of two inputs. The Simulated Annealing implementation is a general purpose hardware tool for multivariable optimization tasks. Here it is applied to do supervised training of the Boolean Neural Network hardware.