Parallel and distributed systems for constructive neural network learning

A constructive learning algorithm dynamically creates a problem-specific neural network architecture rather than learning on a pre-specified architecture. The authors propose a parallel version of their recently presented constructive neural network learning algorithm. Parallelization provides a computational speedup by a factor of O(t) where t is the number of training examples. Distributed and parallel implementations under p4 using a network of workstations and a Touchstone DELTA are examined. Experimental results indicate that algorithm parallelization may result not only in improved computational time, but also in better prediction quality.