IXM2: a parallel associative processor for semantic net processing-preliminary evaluation

The authors describe an associative parallel processor, IXM2, for artificial-intelligence applications, using network structured data (e.g., a semantic network). IXM2 consists of 64 associative processors and nine network processors, having a total of 256 Kwords by 40 bits of associative memory. IXM2 uses a novel interconnection mechanism based on complete connection, realizing both high communication bandwidth and expansibility into a larger system. It is shown that associative memory is very effective in suppressing the computational explosion in large semantic network processing. Arithmetic and logical operations can also be done in parallel on all the words of associative memory, for example, achieving 7200 MOPS for the 'less than' operation.<
>