Network Model of the Simulator

The network model, on which the simulator kernel is based, was designed to accommodate many network types. An important feature of the kernel is the complete encapsulation of all internal data structures and the efficient memory management.

The network model of the simulator kernel has the following properties:

• each unit has an arbitrary, user definable
  • activation function which takes the network input, the present activation, and the threshold to compute the new activation.

  • output function which computes the output value from the activation of the unit.

• each unit has an arbitrary number (possibly zero) of inputs which can be defined by the user. These so called sites have separate user definable input functions.

• sites may have an arbitrary number of connections from other units. A recurrent connection to the unit itself is possible.