NEC Corp has come out in Japan with what it claims is the first commercial version of a personal neuro-computer in the form of add-in boards of neural cells for its PC-9801 family of personal computers. The system is rated at 216,000 neural links a second, and the machine, pitched at research establishments for use in areas such as character recognition, expert systems development and robotics, costs $11,165 including the personal computer. It will only be of interest to those already versed in the technology to start with, because there is as yet no software for it – but next April, NEC plans to come out with a companion program for alphabet and character recognition, and is also working on speech recognition software. The company is hoping it will sell between 500 and 1,000 of the new boards this year.
