A Simulation Study of a Knowledge Base Machine Architecture

As part of Japan’s Fifth Generation Computer Project for the development of a knowledge base machine (KBM), an advanced database machine incorporating a new data model and hardware architecture is proposed. For the data model, an extension of the ordinary relational model is used. In this model, a term which may contain variables is allowed as an attribute value and operations over relations concerning unifiability between terms are defined. For the hardware architecture, unification engines handle unification operations over relations in parallel, and a multiport page-memory reduces the bottleneck between primary and secondary storage.