For my graduate research I am creating a neural network that trains to recognize images. I am going much more complex than just taking a grid of RGB values, downsampling, and and sending them to the input of the network, like many examples do. I actually use over 100 independently trained neural networks that detect features, such as lines, shading patterns, etc. Much more like the human eye, and it works really well so far! The problem is I have quite a bit of training data. I show it over 100 examples of what a car looks like. Then 100 examples of what a person looks like. Then over 100 of what a dog looks like, etc. This is quite a bit of training data! Currently I am running at about one week to train the network. This is kind of killing my progress, as I need to adjust and retrain.

I am using Neuroph, as the low-level neural network API. I am running a dual-quadcore machine(16 cores with hyperthreading), so this should be fast. My processor percent is at only 5%. Are there any tricks on Neuroph performance? Or Java peroformance in general? Suggestions? I am a cognitive psych doctoral student, and I am decent as a programmer, but do not know a great deal about performance programming.