CM1K Hardware User’s Manual
21
3.5.3
Recognize a vector
A vector broadcasted to the neuron bus is evaluated by all the committed neurons in parallel. The CogniMem
network can exercise two types of classifiers: Radial Basis Function Network (RBF) or K_Nearest Neighbor classifier
(KNN). The KNN classifier always returns a response, when the RBF classifier discriminates case of positive
identification, uncertainty and unknown.
KNN
RBF
The KNN classifier discards the relationship between
the distance and influence field of a neuron. As a
consequence, all the neurons fire and their distance
and category can be read in sequence per increasing
order of distance.
Since a pattern is always recognized whatever its
distance from a neuron, the KNN must not be active
during learning or it will just create a first and single
neuron.
The RBF classifier uses the Influence Field of the neurons
at the time of the recognition. A neuron fires only if the
distance calculated between the input vector and its
vector in memory is less than its influence field.
In either cases, the response of the neurons can be accessed by a succession of (Read DIST, followed by Read CAT
and optionally Read NID registers). The first distance quantifies the difference between the input vector and the
neuron with the closest pattern. The category of this neuron is the category with the highest confidence level. The
second distance quantifies the difference between the input vector and the neuron with the second closest
pattern. The category of this neuron is the category with the second highest confidence level, and so on. In the
case of the RBF classifier, all the firing neurons have been read when Read DIST returns the value 0xFFFF.
The following diagram illustrates the three levels of response which can be delivered by the neurons through the
readout of the registers NSR, DIST, CAT and NID. They are listed per increasing number of system cycles:
-
Conformity, or status of the recognition (identified, uncertain or unknown)
-
Best match in distance and its associated category
-
All possible matches listed per increasing distance values.