So far we have allowed only a single node to update or fire at any time step. All nodes are possible candidates for update and so they operate asynchronously; that is, there is no coordination between them in time. The other extreme case occurs if we make all nodes fire at the same time, in which case we say there is synchronous update. To do this, we must ensure that each nodes previous output is available to the rest of the net until all nodes have evaluated their activation and been updated. It is therefore necessary to store both the current state vector and the next state vector. The behaviour is now deterministic; given any state, a state transition occurs to a well defined next state, there being no probabilistic behaviour. The analysis, in terms of energy changes at each update, given above no longer applies but there is now a simplified type of state diagram in which only a single arc emerges from any state. This allows us to predict, once again, the general type of behaviour. In particular, state-cycles occur again but now there is the possibility for multiple-state cycles.
state diagrams for synchronous update
These may be useful in storing sequences of events or patterns. A little thought will show that the (single) state cycles remain the same under synchronous dynamics so the single stored patterns remain the same under both dynamics.