A conventional associative memory has storage cells divided into an associative area and a storage area. The writing of information into an associative memory is made without address The storage cell area is commonly arranged as shift registers
The computer was invented during the 1940's. Since then it has been developed with a revolutionary speed. In spite of this, current days computers have almost the same architecture as the first ones.
Most improvements have been made in the hardware The introduction of VLSI and the enhancement in lithography has made it possible to build one chip computers that only five years ago were called super computers. The dimensions have shrunk exponentially and are now less than 1 micrometer. The clock rate as well as the number of active transistors have increased many orders of magnitude Physical limitations will probably limit the line width to 0.2 micrometer.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds