Framebuffer

Framebuffer

A framebuffer (frame buffer, or sometimes framestore) is a portion of random-access memory (RAM) containing a bitmap that drives a video display. It is a memory buffer containing data representing all the pixels in a complete video frame. Modern video cards contain framebuffer circuitry in their cores. This circuitry converts an in-memory bitmap into a video signal that can be displayed on a computer monitor. In computing, a screen buffer is a part of computer memory used by a computer application for the representation of the content to be shown on the computer display. The screen buffer may also be called the video buffer, the regeneration buffer, or regen buffer for short. The phrase "screen buffer” refers to a logical function, while video memory refers to a hardware storage location. In particular, the screen buffer may be placed in the main RAM, the video memory, or some other hardware location. To reduce latency and avoid screen tearing, multiple frames can be buffered, and this technique is called multiple buffering. When this is so, at any time, only one frame would be visible, and the others would not be. The currently invisible frames are located in the off-screen buffer. The information in the buffer typically consists of color values for every pixel to be shown on the display. Color values are commonly stored in 1-bit binary (monochrome), 4-bit palettized, 8-bit palettized, 16-bit high color and 24-bit true color formats. An additional alpha channel is sometimes used to retain information about pixel transparency. The total amount of memory required for the framebuffer depends on the resolution of the output signal, and on the color depth or palette size. == History == Computer researchers had long discussed the theoretical advantages of a framebuffer but were unable to produce a machine with sufficient memory at an economically practicable cost. In 1947, the Manchester Baby computer used a Williams tube, later the Williams-Kilburn tube, to store 1024 bits on a cathode-ray tube (CRT) memory and displayed on a second CRT. Other research labs were exploring these techniques with MIT Lincoln Laboratory achieving a 4096 display in 1950. A color-scanned display was implemented in the late 1960s, called the Brookhaven RAster Display (BRAD), which used a drum memory and a television monitor. In 1969, A. Michael Noll of Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. implemented a scanned display with a frame buffer, using magnetic-core memory. A year or so later, the Bell Labs system was expanded to display an image with a color depth of three bits on a standard color TV monitor. The vector graphics used in the computer had to be converted for the scanned graphics of a TV display. In the early 1970s, the development of MOS memory (metal–oxide–semiconductor memory) integrated-circuit chips, particularly high-density DRAM (dynamic random-access memory) chips with at least 1 kb memory, made it practical to create, for the first time, a digital memory system with framebuffers capable of holding a standard video image. This led to the development of the SuperPaint system by Richard Shoup at Xerox PARC in 1972. Shoup was able to use the SuperPaint framebuffer to create an early digital video-capture system. By synchronizing the output signal to the input signal, Shoup was able to overwrite each pixel of data as it shifted in. Shoup also experimented with modifying the output signal using color tables. These color tables allowed the SuperPaint system to produce a wide variety of colors outside the range of the limited 8-bit data it contained. This scheme would later become commonplace in computer framebuffers. In 1974, Evans & Sutherland released the first commercial framebuffer, the Picture System, costing about $15,000. It was capable of producing resolutions of up to 512 by 512 pixels in 8-bit grayscale, and became a boon for graphics researchers who did not have the resources to build their own framebuffer. The New York Institute of Technology would later create the first 24-bit color system using three of the Evans & Sutherland framebuffers. Each framebuffer was connected to an RGB color output (one for red, one for green and one for blue), with a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP 11/04 minicomputer controlling the three devices as one. In 1975, the UK company Quantel produced the first commercial full-color broadcast framebuffer, the Quantel DFS 3000. It was first used in TV coverage of the 1976 Montreal Olympics to generate a picture-in-picture inset of the Olympic flaming torch while the rest of the picture featured the runner entering the stadium. The rapid improvement of integrated-circuit technology made it possible for many of the home computers of the late 1970s to contain low-color-depth framebuffers. Today, nearly all computers with graphical capabilities utilize a framebuffer for generating the video signal. Amiga computers, created in the 1980s, featured special design attention to graphics performance and included a unique Hold-And-Modify framebuffer capable of displaying 4096 colors. Framebuffers also became popular in high-end workstations and arcade system boards throughout the 1980s. SGI, Sun Microsystems, HP, DEC and IBM all released framebuffers for their workstation computers in this period. These framebuffers were usually of a much higher quality than could be found in most home computers, and were regularly used in television, printing, computer modeling and 3D graphics. Framebuffers were also used by Sega for its high-end arcade boards, which were also of a higher quality than on home computers. == Display modes == Framebuffers used in personal and home computing often had sets of defined modes under which the framebuffer can operate. These modes reconfigure the hardware to output different resolutions, color depths, memory layouts and refresh rate timings. In the world of Unix machines and operating systems, such conveniences were usually eschewed in favor of directly manipulating the hardware settings. This manipulation was far more flexible in that any resolution, color depth and refresh rate was attainable – limited only by the memory available to the framebuffer. An unfortunate side-effect of this method was that the display device could be driven beyond its capabilities. In some cases, this resulted in hardware damage to the display. More commonly, it simply produced garbled and unusable output. Modern CRT monitors fix this problem through the introduction of protection circuitry. When the display mode is changed, the monitor attempts to obtain a signal lock on the new refresh frequency. If the monitor is unable to obtain a signal lock or if the signal is outside the range of its design limitations, the monitor will ignore the framebuffer signal and possibly present the user with an error message. LCD monitors tend to contain similar protection circuitry, but for different reasons. Since the LCD must digitally sample the display signal (thereby emulating an electron beam), any signal that is out of range cannot be physically displayed on the monitor. == Color palette == Framebuffers have traditionally supported a wide variety of color modes. Due to the expense of memory, most early framebuffers used 1-bit (2 colors per pixel), 2-bit (4 colors), 4-bit (16 colors) or 8-bit (256 colors) color depths. The problem with such small color depths is that a full range of colors cannot be produced. The solution to this problem was indexed color, which adds a lookup table to the framebuffer. Each color stored in framebuffer memory acts as a color index. The lookup table serves as a palette with a limited number of different colors, while the rest is used as an index table. Here is a typical indexed 256-color image and its own palette (shown as a rectangle of swatches): In some designs, it was also possible to write data to the lookup table (or switch between existing palettes) on the fly, allowing dividing the picture into horizontal bars with their own palette and thus rendering an image that had a far wider palette. For example, viewing an outdoor shot photograph, the picture could be divided into four bars: the top one with emphasis on sky tones, the next with foliage tones, the next with skin and clothing tones, and the bottom one with ground colors. This required each palette to have overlapping colors, but, carefully done, allowed great flexibility. == Memory access == While framebuffers are commonly accessed via a memory mapping directly to the CPU memory space, this is not the only method by which they may be accessed. Framebuffers have varied widely in the methods used to access memory. Some of the most common are: Mapping the entire framebuffer to a given memory range. Port commands to set each pixel, range of pixels or palette entry. Mapping a memory range smaller than the framebuffer memory, then bank switching as necessary. The framebuffer organization may be packed pixel or planar. The framebuffer may be all

Automation

Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, mainly by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines. Automation has been achieved by various means including mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, electrical, electronic devices, and computers, usually in combination. Complicated systems, such as modern factories, airplanes, and ships typically use combinations of all of these techniques. The benefits of automation includes labor savings, reducing waste, savings in electricity costs, savings in material costs, and improvements to quality, accuracy, and precision. Automation includes the use of various equipment and control systems such as machinery, processes in factories, boilers, and heat-treating ovens, switching on telephone networks, steering, stabilization of ships, aircraft and other applications and vehicles with reduced human intervention. Examples range from a household thermostat controlling a boiler to a large industrial control system with tens of thousands of input measurements and output control signals. In the simplest type of an automatic control loop, a controller compares a measured value of a process with a desired set value and processes the resulting error signal to change some input to the process, in such a way that the process stays at its set point despite disturbances. This closed-loop control is an application of negative feedback to a system. The mathematical basis of control theory began in the 18th century and advanced rapidly in the 20th. The term automation, inspired by the earlier word automatic (coming from automaton), was not widely used before 1947, when Ford established an automation department. It was during this time that the industry was rapidly adopting feedback controllers, Technological advancements introduced in the 1930s revolutionized various industries significantly. The World Bank's World Development Report of 2019 shows evidence that the new industries and jobs in the technology sector outweigh the economic effects of workers being displaced by automation. Job losses and downward mobility blamed on automation have been cited as one of many factors in the resurgence of nationalist, protectionist and populist politics in the US, UK and France, among other countries since the 2010s. == History == === Early history === It was a preoccupation of the Greeks and Arabs (in the period between about 300 BC and about 1200 AD) to keep an accurate track of time. In Ptolemaic Egypt, about 270 BC, Ctesibius described a float regulator for a water clock, a device not unlike the ball and cock in a modern flush toilet. This was the earliest feedback-controlled mechanism. The appearance of the mechanical clock in the 14th century made the water clock and its feedback control system obsolete. The Persian Banū Mūsā brothers, in their Book of Ingenious Devices (850 AD), described a number of automatic controls. Two-step level controls for fluids, a form of discontinuous variable structure controls, were developed by the Banu Musa brothers. They also described a feedback controller. The design of feedback control systems up through the Industrial Revolution was by trial-and-error, together with a great deal of engineering intuition. It was not until the mid-19th century that the stability of feedback control systems was analyzed using mathematics, the formal language of automatic control theory. The centrifugal governor was invented by Christiaan Huygens in the seventeenth century, and used to adjust the gap between millstones. === Industrial Revolution in Western Europe === The introduction of prime movers, or self-driven machines advanced grain mills, furnaces, boilers, and the steam engine created a new requirement for automatic control systems including temperature regulators (invented in 1624; see Cornelius Drebbel), pressure regulators (1681), float regulators (1700) and speed control devices. Another control mechanism was used to tent the sails of windmills. It was patented by Edmund Lee in 1745. Also in 1745, Jacques de Vaucanson invented the first automated loom. Around 1800, Joseph Marie Jacquard created a punch-card system to program looms. In 1771 Richard Arkwright invented the first fully automated spinning mill driven by water power, known at the time as the water frame. An automatic flour mill was developed by Oliver Evans in 1785, making it the first completely automated industrial process. A centrifugal governor was used by Mr. Bunce of England in 1784 as part of a model steam crane. The centrifugal governor was adopted by James Watt for use on a steam engine in 1788 after Watt's partner Boulton saw one at a flour mill Boulton & Watt were building. The governor could not actually hold a set speed; the engine would assume a new constant speed in response to load changes. The governor was able to handle smaller variations such as those caused by fluctuating heat load to the boiler. Also, there was a tendency for oscillation whenever there was a speed change. As a consequence, engines equipped with this governor were not suitable for operations requiring constant speed, such as cotton spinning. Several improvements to the governor, plus improvements to valve cut-off timing on the steam engine, made the engine suitable for most industrial uses before the end of the 19th century. Advances in the steam engine stayed well ahead of science, both thermodynamics and control theory. The governor received relatively little scientific attention until James Clerk Maxwell published a paper that established the beginning of a theoretical basis for understanding control theory. === 20th century === Relay logic was introduced with factory electrification, which underwent rapid adaptation from 1900 through the 1920s. Central electric power stations were also undergoing rapid growth and the operation of new high-pressure boilers, steam turbines and electrical substations created a great demand for instruments and controls. Central control rooms became common in the 1920s, but as late as the early 1930s, most process controls were on-off. Operators typically monitored charts drawn by recorders that plotted data from instruments. To make corrections, operators manually opened or closed valves or turned switches on or off. Control rooms also used color-coded lights to send signals to workers in the plant to manually make certain changes. The development of the electronic amplifier during the 1920s, which was important for long-distance telephony, required a higher signal-to-noise ratio, which was solved by negative feedback noise cancellation. This and other telephony applications contributed to the control theory. In the 1940s and 1950s, German mathematician Irmgard Flügge-Lotz developed the theory of discontinuous automatic controls, which found military applications during the Second World War to fire control systems and aircraft navigation systems. Controllers, which were able to make calculated changes in response to deviations from a set point rather than on-off control, began being introduced in the 1930s. Controllers allowed manufacturing to continue showing productivity gains to offset the declining influence of factory electrification. Factory productivity was greatly increased by electrification in the 1920s. U.S. manufacturing productivity growth fell from 5.2%/yr 1919–29 to 2.76%/yr 1929–41. Alexander Field notes that spending on non-medical instruments increased significantly from 1929 to 1933 and remained strong thereafter. The First and Second World Wars saw major advancements in the field of mass communication and signal processing. Other key advances in automatic controls include differential equations, stability theory and system theory (1938), frequency domain analysis (1940), ship control (1950), and stochastic analysis (1941). Starting in 1958, various systems based on solid-state digital logic modules for hard-wired programmed logic controllers (the predecessors of programmable logic controllers [PLC]) emerged to replace electro-mechanical relay logic in industrial control systems for process control and automation, including early Telefunken/AEG Logistat, Siemens Simatic, Philips/Mullard/Valvo Norbit, BBC Sigmatronic, ACEC Logacec, Akkord Estacord, Krone Mibakron, Bistat, Datapac, Norlog, SSR, or Procontic systems. In 1959 Texaco's Port Arthur Refinery became the first chemical plant to use digital control. Conversion of factories to digital control began to spread rapidly in the 1970s as the price of computer hardware fell. === Significant applications === The automatic telephone switchboard was introduced in 1892 along with dial telephones. By 1929, 31.9% of the Bell system was automatic. Automatic telephone switching originally used vacuum tube amplifiers and electro-mechanical switches, which consumed a large amount of electricity. Call volume eve

Probit model

In statistics, a probit model is a type of regression where the dependent variable can take only two values, for example married or not married. The word is a portmanteau, coming from probability + unit. The purpose of the model is to estimate the probability that an observation with particular characteristics will fall into a specific one of the categories; moreover, classifying observations based on their predicted probabilities is a type of binary classification model. A probit model is a popular specification for a binary response model. As such it treats the same set of problems as does logistic regression using similar techniques. When viewed in the generalized linear model framework, the probit model employs a probit link function. It is most often estimated using the maximum likelihood procedure, such an estimation being called a probit regression. == Conceptual framework == Suppose a response variable Y is binary, that is it can have only two possible outcomes which we will denote as 1 and 0. For example, Y may represent presence/absence of a certain condition, success/failure of some device, answer yes/no on a survey, etc. We also have a vector of regressors X, which are assumed to influence the outcome Y. Specifically, we assume that the model takes the form P ( Y = 1 ∣ X ) = Φ ( X T β ) , {\displaystyle P(Y=1\mid X)=\Phi (X^{\operatorname {T} }\beta ),} where P is the probability and Φ {\displaystyle \Phi } is the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the standard normal distribution. The parameters β are typically estimated by maximum likelihood. It is possible to motivate the probit model as a latent variable model. Suppose there exists an auxiliary random variable Y ∗ = X T β + ε , {\displaystyle Y^{\ast }=X^{T}\beta +\varepsilon ,} where ε ~ N(0, 1). Then Y can be viewed as an indicator for whether this latent variable is positive: Y = { 1 Y ∗ > 0 0 otherwise } = { 1 X T β + ε > 0 0 otherwise } {\displaystyle Y=\left.{\begin{cases}1&Y^{}>0\\0&{\text{otherwise}}\end{cases}}\right\}=\left.{\begin{cases}1&X^{\operatorname {T} }\beta +\varepsilon >0\\0&{\text{otherwise}}\end{cases}}\right\}} The use of the standard normal distribution causes no loss of generality compared with the use of a normal distribution with an arbitrary mean and standard deviation, because adding a fixed amount to the mean can be compensated by subtracting the same amount from the intercept, and multiplying the standard deviation by a fixed amount can be compensated by multiplying the weights by the same amount. To see that the two models are equivalent, note that P ( Y = 1 ∣ X ) = P ( Y ∗ > 0 ) = P ( X T β + ε > 0 ) = P ( ε > − X T β ) = P ( ε < X T β ) by symmetry of the normal distribution = Φ ( X T β ) {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}P(Y=1\mid X)&=P(Y^{\ast }>0)\\&=P(X^{\operatorname {T} }\beta +\varepsilon >0)\\&=P(\varepsilon >-X^{\operatorname {T} }\beta )\\&=P(\varepsilon 0 {\displaystyle t,\lim _{n\rightarrow \infty }n_{t}/n=c_{t}>0} . Denote p ^ t = r t / n t {\displaystyle {\hat {p}}_{t}=r_{t}/n_{t}} σ ^ t 2 = 1 n t p ^ t ( 1 − p ^ t ) φ 2 ( Φ − 1 ( p ^ t ) ) {\displaystyle {\hat {\sigma }}_{t}^{2}={\frac {1}{n_{t}}}{\frac {{\hat {p}}_{t}(1-{\hat {p}}_{t})}{\varphi ^{2}{\big (}\Phi ^{-1}({\hat {p}}_{t}){\big )}}}} Then Berkson's minimum chi-square estimator is a generalized least squares estimator in a regression of Φ − 1 ( p ^ t ) {\displaystyle \Phi ^{-1}({\hat {p}}_{t})} on x ( t ) {\displaystyle x_{(t)}} with weights σ ^ t − 2 {\displaystyle {\hat {\sigma }}_{t}^{-2}} : β ^ = ( ∑ t = 1 T σ ^ t − 2 x ( t ) x ( t ) T ) − 1 ∑ t = 1 T σ ^ t − 2 x ( t ) Φ − 1 ( p ^ t ) {\displaystyle {\hat {\beta }}={\Bigg (}\sum _{t=1}^{T}{\hat {\sigma }}_{t}^{-2}x_{(t)}x_{(t)}^{\operatorname {T} }{\Bigg )}^{-1}\sum _{t=1}^{T}{\hat {\sigma }}_{t}^{-2}x_{(t)}\Phi ^{-1}({\hat {p}}_{t})} It can be shown that this estimator is consistent (as n→∞ and T fixed), asymptotically normal and efficient. Its advantage is the presence of a closed-form formula for the estimator. However, it is only meaningful to carry out this analysis when individual observations are not available, only their aggregated counts r t {\displaystyle r_{t}} , n t {\disp

Semantic mapping (statistics)

Semantic mapping (SM) is a statistical method for dimensionality reduction (the transformation of data from a high-dimensional space into a low-dimensional space). SM can be used in a set of multidimensional vectors of features to extract a few new features that preserves the main data characteristics. SM performs dimensionality reduction by clustering the original features in semantic clusters and combining features mapped in the same cluster to generate an extracted feature. Given a data set, this method constructs a projection matrix that can be used to map a data element from a high-dimensional space into a reduced dimensional space. SM can be applied in construction of text mining and information retrieval systems, as well as systems managing vectors of high dimensionality. SM is an alternative to random mapping, principal components analysis and latent semantic indexing methods.

IBM Watsonx

Watsonx is a platform by IBM for building and managing artificial intelligence (AI) applications for business use. Released on May 9, 2023, the platform provides software tools and infrastructure for companies to work with both IBM's own AI models and models from third-party sources. The platform consists of three main components: watsonx.ai, a studio for training, validating, and deploying AI models; watsonx.data, a system for storing and managing data used by the models; and watsonx.governance, a toolkit to ensure AI applications are compliant with company policies and regulations. A key feature of the platform is that it can be trained on a company's private data to perform specialized tasks, a process known as fine-tuning. IBM states that this client-specific data is not used to train its own models. == History == Watsonx was introduced on May 9, 2023, at the annual IBM Think conference, as a platform that includes multiple services. Just like Watson AI computer with the similar name, Watsonx was named after Thomas J. Watson, IBM's founder and first CEO. On February 13, 2024, Anaconda partnered with IBM to embed its open-source Python packages into Watsonx. Watsonx is used at ESPN's Fantasy Football App for managing players' performance, and by Italian telecommunications company Wind Tre. It was employed to generate editorial content around nominees during the 66th Annual Grammy Awards. In 2025, Wimbledon integrated IBM watsonx generative AI into its app and website. Integrated with IBM Safer Payments, IBM watsonx has been used in banking sector fraud detection and anti-money laundering (AML) systems. == Services == === watsonx.ai === Watsonx.ai is a platform that allows AI developers to leverage a wide range of LLMs under IBM's own Granite series and others such as Facebook's LLaMA-2, free and open-source model Mistral, and many others present in the Hugging Face community. These models come pre-trained and optimized for various natural language processing (NLP) applications.The platform also allows fine-tuning with its Tuning Studio. === watsonx.data === Watsonx.data is a platform designed to assist clients in addressing issues related to data volume, complexity, cost, and governance.. The platform facilitates seamless data access, whether stored in the cloud or on-premises, through a single entry point. === watsonx.governance === Watsonx.governance is a platform that utilizes IBM's AI capabilities to implement AI lifecycle governance. This helps them manage risks and maintain compliance with evolving AI and industry regulations, while reducing AI bias through automated oversight.

Tactical NAV

Tactical NAV, also known as TACNAV-X, is a location-based tracking app designed for use by military personnel. The app is primarily designed to assist in pinpointing enemy fire and mapping waypoints. Tactical NAV also helps users efficiently relay critical information to tactical operations centers for prompt decision-making regarding airstrikes or medical evacuations. The TACNAV-X platform is intended to enhance situational awareness, refine navigation capabilities, and assist in tactical decision-making across various operational environments. == Overview == Tactical NAV allows users to pinpoint enemy fire. == History == Tactical NAV was designed by U.S. Army Captain Jonathan J. Springer, a Field Artillery officer serving as a Battalion Fire Support Officer (FSO) in the 101st Airborne Division. Springer conceived the idea for the app during his third tour in Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. On June 25, 2010, after a rocket attack by the Taliban killed two soldiers in his battalion, he was inspired to create an app that would prevent similar losses in the future, enhance situational awareness, and assist soldiers serving on combat deployments. In 2010, Springer founded TacNav Systems (formerly AppDaddy Technologies) to develop mobile applications for use by military personnel. He tested the app during combat operations in eastern Afghanistan and verified TACNAV-X's accuracy using DAGRs, AFATDS, Falcon View, CPOF, ATAK, and other approved Department of Defense (DoD) systems. As of 2012, the app had been downloaded 8,000 times.

Neural cryptography

Neural cryptography is a branch of cryptography dedicated to analyzing the application of stochastic algorithms, especially artificial neural network algorithms, for use in encryption and cryptanalysis. == Definition == Artificial neural networks are well known for their ability to selectively explore the solution space of a given problem. This feature finds a natural niche of application in the field of cryptanalysis. At the same time, neural networks offer a new approach to attack ciphering algorithms based on the principle that any function could be reproduced by a neural network, which is a powerful proven computational tool that can be used to find the inverse-function of any cryptographic algorithm. The ideas of mutual learning, self learning, and stochastic behavior of neural networks and similar algorithms can be used for different aspects of cryptography, like public-key cryptography, solving the key distribution problem using neural network mutual synchronization, hashing or generation of pseudo-random numbers. Another idea is the ability of a neural network to separate space in non-linear pieces using "bias". It gives different probabilities of activating the neural network or not. This is very useful in the case of Cryptanalysis. Two names are used to design the same domain of research: Neuro-Cryptography and Neural Cryptography. The first work that it is known on this topic can be traced back to 1995 in an IT Master Thesis. == Applications == In 1995, Sebastien Dourlens applied neural networks to cryptanalyze DES by allowing the networks to learn how to invert the S-tables of the DES. The bias in DES studied through Differential Cryptanalysis by Adi Shamir is highlighted. The experiment shows about 50% of the key bits can be found, allowing the complete key to be found in a short time. Hardware application with multi micro-controllers have been proposed due to the easy implementation of multilayer neural networks in hardware. One example of a public-key protocol is given by Khalil Shihab . He describes the decryption scheme and the public key creation that are based on a backpropagation neural network. The encryption scheme and the private key creation process are based on Boolean algebra. This technique has the advantage of small time and memory complexities. A disadvantage is the property of backpropagation algorithms: because of huge training sets, the learning phase of a neural network is very long. Therefore, the use of this protocol is only theoretical so far. == Neural key exchange protocol == The most used protocol for key exchange between two parties A and B in the practice is Diffie–Hellman key exchange protocol. Neural key exchange, which is based on the synchronization of two tree parity machines, should be a secure replacement for this method. Synchronizing these two machines is similar to synchronizing two chaotic oscillators in chaos communications. === Tree parity machine === The tree parity machine is a special type of multi-layer feedforward neural network. It consists of one output neuron, K hidden neurons and K×N input neurons. Inputs to the network take three values: x i j ∈ { − 1 , 0 , + 1 } {\displaystyle x_{ij}\in \left\{-1,0,+1\right\}} The weights between input and hidden neurons take the values: w i j ∈ { − L , . . . , 0 , . . . , + L } {\displaystyle w_{ij}\in \left\{-L,...,0,...,+L\right\}} Output value of each hidden neuron is calculated as a sum of all multiplications of input neurons and these weights: σ i = sgn ⁡ ( ∑ j = 1 N w i j x i j ) {\displaystyle \sigma _{i}=\operatorname {sgn}(\sum _{j=1}^{N}w_{ij}x_{ij})} Signum is a simple function, which returns −1,0 or 1: sgn ⁡ ( x ) = { − 1 if x < 0 , 0 if x = 0 , 1 if x > 0. {\displaystyle \operatorname {sgn}(x)={\begin{cases}-1&{\text{if }}x<0,\\0&{\text{if }}x=0,\\1&{\text{if }}x>0.\end{cases}}} If the scalar product is 0, the output of the hidden neuron is mapped to −1 in order to ensure a binary output value. The output of neural network is then computed as the multiplication of all values produced by hidden elements: τ = ∏ i = 1 K σ i {\displaystyle \tau =\prod _{i=1}^{K}\sigma _{i}} Output of the tree parity machine is binary. === Protocol === Each party (A and B) uses its own tree parity machine. Synchronization of the tree parity machines is achieved in these steps Initialize random weight values Execute these steps until the full synchronization is achieved Generate random input vector X Compute the values of the hidden neurons Compute the value of the output neuron Compare the values of both tree parity machines Outputs are the same: one of the suitable learning rules is applied to the weights Outputs are different: go to 2.1 After the full synchronization is achieved (the weights wij of both tree parity machines are same), A and B can use their weights as keys. This method is known as a bidirectional learning. One of the following learning rules can be used for the synchronization: Hebbian learning rule: w i + = g ( w i + σ i x i Θ ( σ i τ ) Θ ( τ A τ B ) ) {\displaystyle w_{i}^{+}=g(w_{i}+\sigma _{i}x_{i}\Theta (\sigma _{i}\tau )\Theta (\tau ^{A}\tau ^{B}))} Anti-Hebbian learning rule: w i + = g ( w i − σ i x i Θ ( σ i τ ) Θ ( τ A τ B ) ) {\displaystyle w_{i}^{+}=g(w_{i}-\sigma _{i}x_{i}\Theta (\sigma _{i}\tau )\Theta (\tau ^{A}\tau ^{B}))} Random walk: w i + = g ( w i + x i Θ ( σ i τ ) Θ ( τ A τ B ) ) {\displaystyle w_{i}^{+}=g(w_{i}+x_{i}\Theta (\sigma _{i}\tau )\Theta (\tau ^{A}\tau ^{B}))} Where: Θ ( a , b ) = 0 {\displaystyle \Theta (a,b)=0} if a ≠ b {\displaystyle a\neq b} otherwise Θ ( a , b ) = 1 {\displaystyle \Theta (a,b)=1} And: g ( x ) {\displaystyle g(x)} is a function that keeps the w i {\displaystyle w_{i}} in the range { − L , − L + 1 , . . . , 0 , . . . , L − 1 , L } {\displaystyle \{-L,-L+1,...,0,...,L-1,L\}} === Attacks and security of this protocol === In every attack it is considered, that the attacker E can eavesdrop messages between the parties A and B, but does not have an opportunity to change them. ==== Brute force ==== To provide a brute force attack, an attacker has to test all possible keys (all possible values of weights wij). By K hidden neurons, K×N input neurons and boundary of weights L, this gives (2L+1)KN possibilities. For example, the configuration K = 3, L = 3 and N = 100 gives us 310253 key possibilities, making the attack impossible with today's computer power. ==== Learning with own tree parity machine ==== One of the basic attacks can be provided by an attacker, who owns the same tree parity machine as the parties A and B. He wants to synchronize his tree parity machine with these two parties. In each step there are three situations possible: Output(A) ≠ Output(B): None of the parties updates its weights. Output(A) = Output(B) = Output(E): All the three parties update weights in their tree parity machines. Output(A) = Output(B) ≠ Output(E): Parties A and B update their tree parity machines, but the attacker can not do that. Because of this situation his learning is slower than the synchronization of parties A and B. It has been proven, that the synchronization of two parties is faster than learning of an attacker. It can be improved by increasing of the synaptic depth L of the neural network. That gives this protocol enough security and an attacker can find out the key only with small probability. ==== Other attacks ==== For conventional cryptographic systems, we can improve the security of the protocol by increasing of the key length. In the case of neural cryptography, we improve it by increasing of the synaptic depth L of the neural networks. Changing this parameter increases the cost of a successful attack exponentially, while the effort for the users grows polynomially. Therefore, breaking the security of neural key exchange belongs to the complexity class NP. Alexander Klimov, Anton Mityaguine, and Adi Shamir say that the original neural synchronization scheme can be broken by at least three different attacks—geometric, probabilistic analysis, and using genetic algorithms. Even though this particular implementation is insecure, the ideas behind chaotic synchronization could potentially lead to a secure implementation. === Permutation parity machine === The permutation parity machine is a binary variant of the tree parity machine. It consists of one input layer, one hidden layer and one output layer. The number of neurons in the output layer depends on the number of hidden units K. Each hidden neuron has N binary input neurons: x i j ∈ { 0 , 1 } {\displaystyle x_{ij}\in \left\{0,1\right\}} The weights between input and hidden neurons are also binary: w i j ∈ { 0 , 1 } {\displaystyle w_{ij}\in \left\{0,1\right\}} Output value of each hidden neuron is calculated as a sum of all exclusive disjunctions (exclusive or) of input neurons and these weights: σ i = θ N ( ∑ j = 1 N w i j ⊕ x i j ) {\displaystyle \sigma _{i}=\theta _{N}(\sum _{j=1}^{N}w_{ij}\oplus x_{ij})} (⊕ means XOR). Th