RBMs were first developed using binary units in both the visible and hidden layer. The corresponding energy function is defined as follows: $$ \begin{align} E(\mathbf{x}, \mathbf{h}) = - \sum_i^M x_i a_i- \sum_j^N b_j h_j - \sum_{i,j}^{M,N} x_i w_{ij} h_j, \tag{4} \end{align} $$ where the binary values taken on by the nodes are most commonly 0 and 1.

Another varient is the RBM where the visible units are Gaussian while the hidden units remain binary: $$ \begin{align} E(\mathbf{x}, \mathbf{h}) = \sum_i^M \frac{(x_i - a_i)^2}{2\sigma_i^2} - \sum_j^N b_j h_j - \sum_{i,j}^{M,N} \frac{x_i w_{ij} h_j}{\sigma_i^2}. \tag{5} \end{align} $$