Sorting by Hopfield net

摘要

In a manner similar to T.T. Hopfield and D.W. Tank'snimplementation of the traveling salesman problem on a Hopfield net (Bio.nCybern. vol. 52, p.141-52, 1985), a Hopfield net is programmed to sort anlist of arbitrary positive numbers. A detailed derivation of thenmathematical constraints is presented, from the general four-axis energynequations to the numerical simulations. Excellent results were obtainednfrom the simulations for sorts on lists containing 4 to 10 evenly spacednintegers. It was found that increasing the list size n or thenspacing f caused the network to become increasingly sensitivento the two parameters C and D, but near-optimal valuesnfor these were found. Sorting is probably a considerably more practicalnuse of neural nets than solving the traveling salesman problem sincensorts are used extensively throughout many applications