Illustrating interesting ways in which new parallel hardware is being used to improve performance and increase functionality for a variety of information systems, this book, containing 13 original papers, surveys the latest trends in performance enhancing architectures for smart information systems. It will appeal to anyone engaged in the design or use of high-performance architectures for non-numeric applications.

This book illustrates interesting ways in which new parallel hardware is being used to improve performance and increase functionality for a variety of information systems. The book, containing 13 original papers, surveys the latest trends in performance enhancing architectures for smart information systems. It will appeal to all those engaged in the design or use of high-performance architectures for non-numeric applications.
The machines featured throughout this text are designed to support information systems ranging from relational databases to semantic networks and other artificial intelligence paradigms. In addition, many of the projects illustrated in the book contain generic architectural ideas that support higher-level requirements and are based on semantics-free hardware designs.

Contents

• Introduction
• Database Machines
• Using Massively Parallel General Computing Platforms for DBMS
• Knowledge-Base Machines
• Artificial Intelligence Machines

This book illustrates important ways in which new parallel hardware is being used to improve the speed and usefulness of a variety of information systems. It contains thirteen original papers that survey the latest trends in performance enhancing architectures for smart information systems.

The machines featured in the text have been designed to support information systems ranging from relational databases to semantic networks and other artificial intelligence paradigms. In addition, many of the projects illustrated in the book contain generic architectural ideas that support higher-level requirements by using semantics-free hardware designs.

The case studies describe add-on machines and performance-enhancing units that employ parallel hardware to speed up database operations. Other case studies show how high-performance computers support database and related software, even though some platforms were originally designed for scientific or numeric applications. The last three chapters give examples of machines that are deliberately designed to speed up a particular knowledge representation formalism or a particular AI problem solving paradigm. The information presented throughout this book will help all those engaged in the design or use of high-performance architectures for nonnumeric (i.e., symbolic) applications.