ALBERT

Description: F77NNS (A FORTRAN-77 Neural Network Simulator) simulates the popular back error propagation neural network. F77NNS is an ANSI-77 FORTRAN program designed to take advantage of vectorization when run on machines having this capability, but it will run on any computer with an ANSI-77 FORTRAN Compiler. Artificial neural networks are formed from hundreds or thousands of simulated neurons, connected to each other in a manner similar to biological nerve cells. Problems which involve pattern matching or system modeling readily fit the class of problems which F77NNS is designed to solve. The program's formulation trains a neural network using Rumelhart's back-propagation algorithm. Typically the nodes of a network are grouped together into clumps called layers. A network will generally have an input layer through which the various environmental stimuli are presented to the network, and an output layer for determining the network's response. The number of nodes in these two layers is usually tied to features of the problem being solved. Other layers, which form intermediate stops between the input and output layers, are called hidden layers. The back-propagation training algorithm can require massive computational resources to implement a large network such as a network capable of learning text-to-phoneme pronunciation rules as in the famous Sehnowski experiment. The Sehnowski neural network learns to pronounce 1000 common English words. The standard input data defines the specific inputs that control the type of run to be made, and input files define the NN in terms of the layers and nodes, as well as the input/output (I/O) pairs. The program has a restart capability so that a neural network can be solved in stages suitable to the user's resources and desires. F77NNS allows the user to customize the patterns of connections between layers of a network. The size of the neural network to be solved is limited only by the amount of random access memory (RAM) available to the user. The program has a memory requirement of about 900K. The standard distribution medium for this package is a .25 inch streaming magnetic tape cartridge in UNIX tar format. It is also available on a 3.5 inch diskette in UNIX tar format. F77NNS was developed in 1989.