Associative and Parallel Processors

Associative Processor Architecture—a Survey

“…An associative memory [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] can be defined as a memory system with the property that stored data items can be retrieved by their content or part of their content (that is, by the first property of an associative processor). An associative memory has been also called catalog memory [11], contentaddressed memory [12], data-addressed memory [13], parallel search memory [14], search memory [15][16][17], search associative memory [18], content-add~'essable memory [19], distributed logic memory [20], associative pushdown memory [21], and multi-access associative memory [22].…”

“…The ALU performs the specified data transformation operations and the result is then stored in the associative memory, if necessary. From the point of view of architecture, associative processors belong to the general category called SIMD (Single Instruction Stream Multiple Data Stream) machines [5,24]. An SIMD machine is a computer with a single instruction which instructs more than one processing element, all of which either execute or ignore the current instruction.…”

“…Because of the rapid development of large-scale integrated-circuit (LSI) technology, the implementation cost of associative processors will be greatly reduced and it is anticipated that associative processors will be used more extensively for enhancing the performance of many special-purpose and general-purpose computer systems. Although there have been several papers providing either tutorials or literature surveys on associative processors [1][2][3][4][5], a number of new developments have not been described in any of the previous survey papers. In this paper, we will present a survey of the architecture of various associative processors, with emphasis on their characteristics, categorization, and implementation, and especially recent developments.…”

Syntactic Algorithms for Image Segmentation and a Special Computer Architecture for Image Processing

“…The parallel processor is proposed because of the parallel nature of the operations involved in image processing. Parallel machines are considered to be particularly suitable for image processing by Thurber and Wald [102]. The parallel processor of the proposed computer architecture consists of an array of microprocessors which allow parallel processing capability.…”

“…For special image processing computers, some processing powers of conventional processors, such as associative addressing, are not essential [102]. The approach of designing a general purpose computer by microprocessors has been controversial.…”