Nestor’s Neural Recognition in Silicon

Last month, we briefly reported that Nestor, Inc. will be the exclusive distributor for the Ni1000 Recognition Accelerator chip, jointly developed by Nestor and Intel.

The chip, incorporating neural network technology, appears especially suitable for performing advanced pattern recognition tasks—such as handwriting recognition—much faster than current CISC or RISC processors.

Nestor is now making its Ni1000 Development System available, which is a Microsoft Windows-based development environment that includes software together with a PC/AT compatible board housing the Ni1000 chip.

The Recognition Accelerator

Nestor and Intel claim that the Ni1000 is capable of performing 16.5 billion operations per second, enabling optical character recognition to be performed at over 10,000 characters per second.

The chip features parallel processing design and includes over 3.7 million transistors. The Ni1000 has a microprocessor-compatible interface that should make it relatively easy for OEM board manufacturers to integrate.

Nestor states that the Ni1000 can process up to 33,000 patterns per second, and is capable of performing a comparison of the input against data stored in on-chip FLASH EPROM memory.

The 256 KB non-volatile CHMOS FLASH memory requires no battery power to maintain the data stored as part of the neural net’s learning process.

At the heart of the Ni1000 lies the support for Nestor’s P-RCE learning algorithm. The algorithm enables the system to learn a pattern with as few as six presentations of the input data. As expected, adding information to a neural network has little or no effect on recognition knowledge already stored.

The Ni1000 Development System

Developed for complex problems such as OCR, fingerprint recognition, and other signal processing applications, the Ni1000 Development System features a 16-bit ISA board that hosts the Recognition Accelerator chip.

The Windows-based software includes facilities for training, classifying, and testing the input data. The system also includes a complete assembler environment that enables you to develop and debug programs for the Ni1000 chip. Using the Emulator, you can test and modify the code before downloading it the Ni1000’s FLASH-EPROM storage.

For higher-level development, the Ni1000 Development System comes with a rich C language library. The library is available as both a set of C library functions for direct linking with your programs, or as a Windows DLL for dynamic linking.

The Ni1000 Development System also comes with an unlimited distribution license for programs constructed using the C library.

The hardware requirements are typical for this type of development environment. The system requires a minimum 25 MHz 386-compatible or higher, with 100 MB of disk storage, 1.44 MB disk drive, and a VGA monitor.

The system runs under Microsoft Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS 5.0 or higher.

Partnering for Success

Nestor is offering a development partnership called Recognizing Success. This program gives developers special consideration, including direct access to the development staff, bulletin board support, and extended maintenance.

In addition, membership in the program includes a listing of your product in the first Ni1000 Applications Catalogue, along with discounts on Ni1000 products.

Membership in the Recognizing Success program is priced at $9955. For more information, please contact Michael Glier at Nestor.

Contact:

Nestor, Inc.
One Richmond Square
Providence, RI 02906
(401) 331-9640
(401) 331-7319 (fax)
[email protected]