An associative parallel processor with application to picture processing

In recent years, a number of hardware associative memories had been designed and experimentally verified. These memories allow simultaneous comparison of all stored data to external data. Data may be read from, or written into, comparing words. These memories, acting as peripheral devices to conventional computers, have been studied for application to various tasks described in references 1 and 2. The concept of "associative processing," i.e., simultaneous transformation of many stored data by associative means, has been described previously. This processing mode showed promise in a variety of tasks, but was not efficient when peripherally controlled by a conventional machine. Novel machine organizations were required to fully exploit the potential of these techniques for solving poorly structured nonnumeric problems, at which present-day machines are not efficient.