Parallel processing of chemical information in a local area network--II. A parallel cross-validation procedure for artificial neural networks.

This paper describes a parallel cross-validation (PCV) procedure, for testing the predictive ability of multi-layer feed-forward (MLF) neural networks models, trained by the generalized delta learning rule. The PCV program has been parallelized to operate in a local area computer network. Development and execution of the parallel application was aided by the HYDRA programming environment, which is extensively described in Part I of this paper. A brief theoretical introduction on MLF networks is given and the problems, associated with the validation of predictive abilities, will be discussed. Furthermore, this paper comprises a general outline of the PCV program. Finally, the parallel PCV application is used to validate the predictive ability of an MLF network modeling a chemical non-linear function approximation problem which is described extensively in the literature.