SPERT-II: A Vector Microprocessor System and its Application to Large Problems in Backpropagation Training

We report on our development of a high-performance system for neural network and other signal processing applications. We have designed and implemented a vector microprocessor and packaged it as an attached processor for a conventional workstation. We present performance comparisons with commercial workstations on neural network backpropagation training. The SPERT-II system demonstrates significant speedups over extensively hand-optimization code running on the workstations.