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Published 1985 | public
Book Section - Chapter

A Novel Associative Memory Implemented Using Collective Computation

Abstract

A radically new type of associative memory, the ASSOCMEM, has been implemented in VLSI and tested. Analog circuit techniques are used to construct a network that evolves towards fully restored (digital) fixed-points that are the memories of the system. Association occurs on the whole source word, each bit of which may assume a continuous analog value. The network does not require the distinction of a search key from a data field in either the source or target words. A key may be dynamically defined by differentially weighting any subset of the source word. The key need not be exact; the system will evolve to the closest memory. In the case when the key is the whole input word, the system may be thought of as performing error correction.

Additional Information

© 1985 Computer Science Press. This research was funded by the System Development Foundation. One of us (MS) was also partially supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada. The authors are indebted to Dr. John Hopfield, David Feinstein, and John Platt for many hours of stimulating discussions concerning the nature and properties of collective systems.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
March 5, 2024