A pipelined CAM-based architecture for production system matching

This thesis presents a matching algorithm and an architecture using the Content Addressable Memory (CAM) approach to speed up the execution of the match phase in the OPS5 based production system.;A Pipelined CAM-based Architecture for Production System Matching (PCAPS) is designed to implement the S-CAM algorithm. The two major classes of tasks in the S-CAM network--the constant test and the variable binding test--are executed by two separate units in the architecture.;The developed architecture is simulated in a register transfer level simulator. The performance results indicate that PCAPS provides substantial speedup when applied to several test programs. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).;S-CAM is a sequential matching algorithm developed for efficiently executing the match phase on CAM-based architectures. Networks compiled from the S-CAM are finer detailed than those from the Rete to complement the CAM simple comparison operations. Also, S-CAM is a non-state saving algorithm in which only minimal state information is stored between cycles.