Designers and users of computer systems have long been aware of the fact that inclusion of some kind of content-addressable or "associative" functions in the storage and retrieval mechanisms would allow a more effective and straightforward organization of data than with the usual addressed memories, with the result that the computing power would be significantly increased. However, although the basic principles of content-addressing have been known for over twenty years, the hardware content-addressable memories (CAMs) have found their way only to special roles such as small buffer memories and con trol units. This situation now seems to be changing: Because of the develop ment of new technologies such as very-large-scale integration of semiconduc tor circuits, charge-coupled devices, magnetic-bubble memories, and certain devices based on quantum-mechanical effects, an increasing amount of active searching functions can be transferred to memory units. The prices of the more complex memory components which earlier were too high to allow the application of these principles to mass memories will be reduced to a fraction of the to tal system costs, and this will certainly have a significant impact on the new computer architectures. In order to advance the new memory principles and technologies, more in formation ought to be made accessible to a common user.

Designers and users of computer systems have long been aware of the fact that inclusion of some kind of content-addressable or "associative" functions in the storage and retrieval mechanisms would allow a more effective and straightforward organization of data than with the usual addressed memories, with the result that the computing power would be significantly increased. However, although the basic principles of content-addressing have been known for over twenty years, the hardware content-addressable memories (CAMs) have found their way only to special roles such as small buffer memories and con trol units. This situation now seems to be changing: Because of the develop ment of new technologies such as very-large-scale integration of semiconduc tor circuits, charge-coupled devices, magnetic-bubble memories, and certain devices based on quantum-mechanical effects, an increasing amount of active searching functions can be transferred to memory units. The prices of the more complex memory components which earlier were too high to allow the application of these principles to mass memories will be reduced to a fraction of the to tal system costs, and this will certainly have a significant impact on the new computer architectures. In order to advance the new memory principles and technologies, more in formation ought to be made accessible to a common user.

Content addressable memories or content addressable parallel processors or associative memories or associative processors have been around the computing scene for almost 20 years now. Several hundred papers have been written discussing their use and design but so far no single text or reference book has tried to summarize the field. This volume attempts to remedy this lack. It attempts to gather into one place all the information that exists as of late 1975.

This book presents high-quality papers from the Third International Conference on Smart Computing and Informatics (SCI 2018−19), organized by the School of Computer Engineering and School of Computer Application, Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology Deemed to be University, Bhubaneswar, from 21 to 22 December 2018. It includes advanced and multi-disciplinary research on the design of smart computing and informatics, focusing on innovation paradigms in system knowledge, intelligence and sustainability that have the potential to provide realistic solutions to various problems in society, the environment and industry. The papers featured provide a valuable contribution to the deployment of emerging computational and knowledge transfer approaches, optimizing solutions in varied disciplines of science, technology and health care.

Two significant things have happened since the writing of the first edition in 1983. One of them is recent arousal of strong interest in general aspects of "neural computing", or "neural networks", as the previous neural models are nowadays called. The incentive, of course, has been to develop new com puters. Especially it may have been felt that the so-called fifth-generation computers, based on conventional logic programming, do not yet contain in formation processing principles of the same type as those encountered in the brain. All new ideas for the "neural computers" are, of course, welcome. On the other hand, it is not very easy to see what kind of restrictions there exist to their implementation. In order to approach this problem systematically, cer tain lines of thought, disciplines, and criteria should be followed. It is the pur pose of the added Chapter 9 to reflect upon such problems from a general point of view. Another important thing is a boom of new hardware technologies for dis tributed associative memories, especially high-density semiconductor circuits, and optical materials and components. The era is very close when the parallel processors can be made all-optical. Several working associative memory archi tectures, based solely on optical technologies, have been constructed in recent years. For this reason it was felt necessary to include a separate chapter (Chap. 10) which deals with the optical associative memories. Part of its con tents is taken over from the first edition.

This book gathers outstanding research papers presented at the International Conference on Frontiers in Computing and Systems (COMSYS 2020), held on January 13–15, 2019 at Jalpaiguri Government Engineering College, West Bengal, India and jointly organized by the Department of Computer Science & Engineering and Department of Electronics & Communication Engineering. The book presents the latest research and results in various fields of machine learning, computational intelligence, VLSI, networks and systems, computational biology, and security, making it a rich source of reference material for academia and industry alike.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications, DEXA 2006. The book presents 90 revised full papers together with 1 invited paper. The papers are organized in topical sections on XML, data and information, data mining and data warehouses, database applications, WWW, bioinformatics, process automation and workflow, knowledge management and expert systems, database theory, query processing, and privacy and security.

About the Scope of This Text This book contains two types of material ~ first, the many divergent and often diffuse meanings given to the concepts of association, associative memory, and associative recaZZ are expounded. A review of this kind was felt necessary because there apparently does not exist any single monograph which could serve as a reference to these topics. But the presentation of the main body of this text is motivated by quite other reasons: in recent years, plenty of interesting mathematical and system-theoretical material has been published which makes it possible to gain a view of associative memory which is different from the conventional abstract and computationally oriented approaches. It seems that the basic operation of associative memory, the storage of information together with the relations or links between the data items, and the selective recall of stored information relative to a piece of key or cue information presented, is not restricted to certain computer-technological implementations but can also be reflected in more general mathematically describable processes in certain physical or other systems, especially in their adaptive state changes. It further seems that some generally known forms of associative memory, namely, certain computer technological artifacts, or abstract systems of concepts or data, are in fact special representations of a class of processes characterized as associative memory.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 21st International Symposium on VLSI Design and Test, VDAT 2017, held in Roorkee, India, in June/July 2017. The 48 full papers presented together with 27 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 246 submissions. The papers were organized in topical sections named: digital design; analog/mixed signal; VLSI testing; devices and technology; VLSI architectures; emerging technologies and memory; system design; low power design and test; RF circuits; architecture and CAD; and design verification.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th International Symposium on VSLI Design and Test, VDAT 2012, held in Shibpur, India, in July 2012. The 30 revised regular papers presented together with 10 short papers and 13 poster sessions were carefully selected from 135 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on VLSI design, design and modeling of digital circuits and systems, testing and verification, design for testability, testing memories and regular logic arrays, embedded systems: hardware/software co-design and verification, emerging technology: nanoscale computing and nanotechnology.