Design of a VLSI-based artificial neural network system by a student group

Describes the subject of a particular group of projects carried out by undergraduate, MSc and PhD students, over the past three years. The projects relate to the analysis, design, development and construction of a VLSI-based artificial neural network (ANN) system. The projects have been carefully specified so that they complement each other without significant overlap. In general, the projects fall into one of three categories: applications development (e.g. speech recognition, image recognition, robot control), systems analysis (e.g. hardware configuration requirements for optimum system performance), and hardware design and development (e.g. design of a VLSI IC, design of a demonstrator system for the IC, design of input/output instrumentation such as CCD imagers or robot motion control components). As well as providing for a range of skill/ability levels from construction to open ended research, the projects enable students to concentrate on specific subject areas ranging from software engineering (applications) through hardware/software (systems analysis) to hardware design at IC, PCB and system levels