Synapse 1.6.0 Released
We've released Synapse 1.6.0. Apart from all the cummulative updates since 1.5.2 it includes:
- Improved support for Windows 8 and new Microsoft secuity guidelines
- Performance improvements, speed and memory
- The sensitivity analyzer now can show relative and absolute output sensitivity, in addition to the original error sensitivity.
If you have Synapse installed and automatic updates enabled, you'll get the 1.6 version just by starting up Synapse (you might need to right click, "Run as administrator" if it won't start the new version after upgrade). Customers can download the full installation package from the customer area. A 30-day evaluation version can be downloaded here.
Synapse 1.5 released
Synapse 1.5 has been released and is available for download.
Main highlights:
- Full multicore support for optimizers.
- A new Fully Forward Connected Perceptron Array (FFCPA) advanced neural network block.
- New non-linear gradient optimization algorithms.
- Improved SQL interoperability and data loading performance improvement.
- Control system customization (for deployment)
- Many performance improvements and bug fixes.
-
If you have Synapse installed and automatic updates enabled, you'll get the 1.5 version just by starting up Synapse - for Windows 7 & Server 2008 installations, read note below. Customers can download the full installation package from the customer area. A 30-day evaluation version can be downloaded here.
Very important upgrade information
-
Due to recent changes to the way Windows handles file and directory permissions, if you have User Account Control (UAC) activated the Synapse automatic updates will fail. This is because it no longer has permissions to write to its own plugin directory. In order for the upgrade to work you need to right click on the Synapse icon and select "Run as administrator".
You will only need to do this once as the 1.5 version is compatible with the newer Windows permission policy.
News, updates and plans for 2010
It’s been a while since we published anything here on the blog so here is an update on what’s happening at Peltarion and what the near future looks like.
Two new products
We are currently working hard on the development of two new products. At this point the only things that we can reveal is that the products won’t replace Synapse, and that one is planned for a 2011 and the other for 2012.
Synapse 1.4
The next version of Synapse (1.4) is currently under development. It is feature complete but we have some work left to make it ready for release. It will among other things include multi-core support for optimizers – something that required a complete rewrite of the batch processing system. Synapse 1.4 is planned for release Q2/Q3 2010.
Industry collaboration
Finally, an exciting bit of news is that we have begun a collaboration with Intel. We are not allowed to say anything about it yet, but it involves a combination of their next generation technology and our next generation technology. There will be some seriously cool stuff there.
--The Peltarion Team
Synapse 1.3.1 updates
We have released Synapse 1.3.1 which contains a number of improvements.
The most visible change is to the Sensitivity Analyzer postprocessor which now has a new interface and functions for compensating for internal correlation between features.
There are two major groups of fixes that have been made. One concerns how validation sets are handled by control systems and filters. Only having one or more validation sets could cause inconsistent behaviour in some filters and that has been fixed.
The second group concerns data loading with major improvements in the SQL format and the CSV file format. In both cases threaded data loading speeds have been vastly improved. Also support for accessing a Synapse solution offline (i.e. when the data file/database connection is can't be accessed) has been added. The data unit input manager has been improved as well to better support threaded loading and offline mode.
Finally, on an unrelated topic, the Peltarion website now fully supports the Google Chrome browser.
--The Peltarion Team
Synapse 1.3 released!
Synapse 1.3 has been released and is available for download. This release is a big one with new features and improvements in over 50 components. Although there are hundreds of improvements in the new version there are three major features that you will notice right away:
- Integrated help system. On all blocks and filters you can now find a "Help" item in the settings browser. Clicking on it will take you to the relevant documentation in our new documentation system.
- Script Filter and Script Format components with an advanced Visual Studio-like code editor that allows you to write your own filters and formats directly from Synapse:
- LSTMs (Long Short-Term Memories) are advanced memory structures for use in dynamic adaptive systems. Unlike standard feedback loops LSTMs can preserve information over indefinite time gaps. With LSTMs previously unsolvable time-series problems can now be handled with ease.
If you have Synapse installed and automatic updates enabled, you'll get the 1.3 version just by starting up Synapse. Customers can download the full installation package from the customer area. A 30-day evaluation version can be downloaded here.
Server upgrades
We are currently in the process of upgrading our server hardware, software as well as launching a new version of the home page and a new version of Synapse. This will cause interruptions in our service for the next 24-48 hours. We apologize for the inconvenience but we are sure you will like the improvements.
The new documentation system (http://www.peltarion.com/doc) is online and you can reach it if your ISP's DNS entries have been updated (if not, they will within the next 24 hours). The forums (http://www.peltarion.com/forums) will remain offline for a short while until the upgrades have settled.
A new version of Synapse that features massive improvements will be released tomorrow as both download and automatic update. More on that tomorrow.
We apologize for any inconveniences during this upgrade and hope you will enjoy the new site and the new Synapse 1.3.
--The Peltarion Team
The Synapse Spiral
Consuming deployed components as Synapse plugins
We have received questions on how to load a deployed component into Synapse as a plugin and use it as a building block for new systems. This was something that was intended from early on, but was cut from the release and until now we have had few questions on the subject.
This post will almost be in the form of a tutorial and it will explain the interfaces needed to produce a plugin and to allow for standard signal flow. First we will create a minimal plugin, then fill it with a deployed component and lastly add some bells and whistles.
Synapse 1.2 out!
Synapse 1.2 has been released and is available for download. This release contains a large number of bug fixes in over 40 components making it the largest update yet in terms of number of changes.
There have been some features added as well - mostly minor usability features such as:
- Enhanced copy to clipboard functionality to visualizers
- Cropping by sample and seed support in crop filter
- Per channel equalizing with the equalizer filter
- Improved operator support in the expression filter
- More customization options (scaling, cropping, interpolation..) in image format
- Per sample mixing in the mixer filter
- Row concatenation support for the join format
- Integrated set support for the sink and output formats
- Support for seeds in the unit generation format
- Support for additional data types for the SQL format
Algorithm improvements include:
- NaN/ Infinity detection and prevention for gradient based update rules
- Improved selection algorithms for the GA optimizer
- Additional operators for the expression filter
- Thread securing of optimizable components (for multithreaded execution stability)
The update is about 5 Mb in size when upgrading from 1.1.
If you have Synapse installed and automatic updates enabled, you'll get the 1.2 version just by starting up Synapse. Customers can download the full installation package from the customer area. A 30-day evaluation version can be downloaded here.
Update server down for maintenance
The update server has been taken down today for maintenance. During its offline time no Synapse updates will be possible. The server should be back online at the end of the day (CET).
It has been taken offline due to hardware and software updates. A new version of the update engine for Synapse will be available (downloaded automatically if you have updates enabled) once the server is back up.
Update 17:48 CET: Server is back online and updates are enabled again.
Synapse 1.1 out!
We are happy to present a Christmas gift from us - a new version of Synapse. Version 1.1 includes over 400 improvements including new features and bug fixes. It would take up too much space to list them all, but here are a few highlights:
- A new visualizer, the SOM View that allows visualization and preprocessing of data using Self-Organizing maps. It can also produce clustering filters. For more details see this.
- A new powerful expression filter that allows you to create new features based on equation evaluation.
- New much requested "housekeeping" filters such as the reorder filter and rename filter.
- Windows Vista now supported
- Greatly improved support for data with a large number of features (such as images), including new ranged normalization and great performance enhancements.
- New binary compressed xml file format (.synx) for solutions (old plain xml still supported)
- The Error Analyzer can now send error (system metrics) data to preprocessing in the form of a full data unit.
and much, much more. Documentation for the new features will be published shortly.
If you have Synapse installed and automatic updates enabled, you'll get the 1.1 version just by starting up Synapse. Customers can download the full installation package from the customer area. A 30-day evaluation version can be downloaded here.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all of us at Peltarion!
Updates (1.04) Released
We have released a few updates to Synapse containing a number of improvements, bug fixes and new features:
- The Synapse core loader has been optimized for faster startup of the program.
- A number of GUI improvements have been made and some GUI related bugs have been fixed.
- The Update Engine has been rebuilt to minimize timeouts and network latency, resulting in a faster startup.
- The Data Source component is now optimizable so that you can use an optimizer to select the optimal input features.
- A new and better fitness-evaluation function has been implemented for the optimizers
- Data flow bugs in the Crop Filter and the Mixer Filter have been fixed
- A memory leak in the Gamma Memory has been fixed.
- A new filter, the Wavelet Filter has been added. It performs a discrete wavelet decomposition of a signal and is a very powerful tool for analyzing time series data and provides very helpful preprocessing for dynamic adaptive systems.
To get the latest updates, make sure that you have automatic updates turned on and that you have a working Internet connection and Synapse will handle the rest. This update contains 18 components and is 3.2 MB in size.
/Thomas @ Peltarion
Updates
We have released a few updates to Synapse containing the following bug fixes:
- The Function Layer, Weight Layer and Hebbian Layer components can now lock/release the number of features when changed manually in settings browser. See more detailed explanation below.
- Plots now save the number of input features to their XML definition.
- A bug in the Generalized Hebbian Algorithm that caused the principal components to be incorrectly scaled has been fixed.
To get the latest updates, make sure that you have automatic updates turned on and that you have a working Internet connection and Synapse will handle the rest. This update contains 5 components and is 452 kb in size.
Update 3.4 Released
We have rolled out a new update, (1.0)/3.4 which contains a number of bug fixes and some new features. The update will be automatically downloaded and installed when you start Synapse (provided that you are connected to the internet)
New features:
- The new Updater2 update engine with an improved versioning system, download system and support for a more advanced release structure.
- Improved CSV input format that provides more features for handling string data (enumeration and removal in addition to the existing expansion):
- Generalized Hebbian Algorithm (GHA) update rule. A new Hebbian type update rule that performs PCA. The difference between it and Oja's rule is that GHA results in sorted principal components.
- Splash screen, minor improvement with verbose loading of plugins
- Start screen, some visual improvements
- Two more plot line styles and marker support added to the Scatter Plot:
- Data embedded in solution is now compressed
Bug fixes:
- Component GUI flicker fixed
- Select Filter inadvertent sort fixed
- Hebbian component GUI refresh in training fixed
- Script Filter, disconnected GUI elements removed
- Unstage (scaling) in the Sink component fixed
- Column resize in GridView enabled