D Final Report on ONR Award N00014 -88 -J-1050 Report on a workshop "Hardware Implementation of Neuron Nets and Synapses" San Diego, CA, January 13-15., 1988. Principal Investigator: Paul Mueller Summary of Completed Project: Purpose: The workshop brought together 35 key investigators in this area and several representatives from funding agencies, with the aim to assess the current state of the fi,!d. to exolore the potential for existing and new approaches and to identify those areas that >

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... vide currently the greatest opportunities and rmay need particular emphasis. v"A Assessment: O -it was evident from the high quality of the presentations that the field is making excellent < and rapid progress. This is especially so for the special purpose systems that are modeled o H after biological sensory input systems such as retinas, cochleas and networks for sound localization. The development of larger systems fore more complex problems such as vision, speech recognition, tactile sensing and robotics lies still in the more distant future. It was agreed that the field should make use of currently available technologies although , j " research into new materials, devices and interconnection methodology should be continued . t>, at an active level. Technical Information: The specific discussion topics were grouped into several categories: !. Moditiable Synapses This section explored approaches to building devices that realize variable synaptic weights, typically through a controlled conductance. Several speakers presented designs and tests of both analog or digitally controlled Synapses. In the first category are devices that make use of floating gate technologies or solid state electrochemistry.In the second category are devices in which synaptic gains are set by digital signals and the designs are essentially based on existing DAC technology. 91-04456