title: Asynchronous self-organizing maps.
abstract: A recently defined energy function which leads to a self-organizing map is used as a foundation for an asynchronous neural-network algorithm. We generalize the existing stochastic gradient approach to an asynchronous parallel stochastic gradient method for generating a topological map on a distributed computer system (MIMD). A convergence proof is presented and simulation results on a set of problems are included. A practical problem using the energy function approach is that a summation over the entire network is required during the computation of updates. Using simulations we demonstrate effective algorithms that use efficient sampling for the approximation of these sums.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, ON, P7B5E1, Canada. maurice.benson@lakeheadu.ca
authors.forename: M W
authors.initials: MW
authors.lastname: Benson
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hu