SNAP: A Market-Propagation Architecture for Knowledge Processing

The semantic network array processor (SNAP), a highly parallel architecture targeted to artificial intelligence applications, and in particular natural language understanding, is presented. The knowledge is represented in a form of the semantic network. The knowledge base is distributed among the elements of the SNAP array, and the processing is performed locally where the knowledge is stored. A set of powerful instructions specific to knowledge processing is implemented directly in hardware. SNAP is packaged into 256 custom-designed chips assembled on four printed circuit boards and can store a 16 K node semantic network. SNAP is a marker propagation architecture in which the movement of markers between cells is controlled by propagation rules. Various reasoning mechanisms are implemented with these marker propagation rules. >