I'd think running asynchronously would be closer to modelling the biology (not to mention making it easier to leverage multiple cores), but it would also mean non-deterministic results in anything where the results of computation were order-dependent.
-Tim On Thu, Mar 5, 2015 at 4:27 PM, Fergal Byrne <[email protected]> wrote: > It's just an engineering simplification. In real neocortex, every neuron > is racing against its own leakage currents, but you can get away with > pretending that we have a timestep during which all the cells start from > resting potential and simultaneously compete to fire. > > Using an actor model, you can do away with timesteps to that extent, but > it's not as easy to visualise. > > Regards, > > Fergal Byrne > > On Thu, Mar 5, 2015 at 9:08 PM, Rich Morin <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Mar 5, 2015, at 12:49, Fergal Byrne wrote: >> > The region itself always just predicts one step ahead. ... >> >> The notion of a "step" seems to imply some sort of synchronous logic, >> driven by a master clock. Does the cortex actually work this way? >> >> Aside from curiosity, I'm asking because I've been thinking about the >> problem of synchronizing the processing of an actor-based version of >> NuPIC. This seems like it would need to force all of the actors to >> wait for the slowest actors, message paths, etc. >> >> So, I'm wondering about letting the actors operate asynchronoously, >> handling and firing off messages as the scheduler (etc) allows. Of >> course, this would introduce some differences in the results, but >> that might not be a problem. Is this a reasonable approach to try? >> >> -r >> >> -- >> http://www.cfcl.com/rdm Rich Morin [email protected] >> http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/resume San Bruno, CA, USA +1 650-873-7841 >> >> Software system design, development, and documentation >> >> >> >> > > > -- > > Fergal Byrne, Brenter IT > > http://inbits.com - Better Living through Thoughtful Technology > http://ie.linkedin.com/in/fergbyrne/ - https://github.com/fergalbyrne > > Founder of Clortex: HTM in Clojure - > https://github.com/nupic-community/clortex > > Author, Real Machine Intelligence with Clortex and NuPIC > Read for free or buy the book at https://leanpub.com/realsmartmachines > > Speaking on Clortex and HTM/CLA at euroClojure Krakow, June 2014: > http://euroclojure.com/2014/ > and at LambdaJam Chicago, July 2014: http://www.lambdajam.com > > e:[email protected] t:+353 83 4214179 > Join the quest for Machine Intelligence at http://numenta.org > Formerly of Adnet [email protected] http://www.adnet.ie > -- http://timboudreau.com
