A comparison of hardware and software associative memories in the context of computer graphics

Abstract

The Associative Processing of Line Drawings (APLD) System utilizes a hardware associative memory and creates, modifies, deletes, stores, and retrieves two-dimensional line drawings consisting of points, lines, rectangles, and triangles. The APLD functions were duplicated on the TX-2 computer at M.I.T.'s Lincoln Laboratory under the LEAP Language and Data Structure. A comparison of the hardware approach with the software simulation illustrates the advantages of the hardware associative memory in three areas: (1) processing speed, (2) storage requirements, and (3) flexibility. The major problem areas of hardware associative memory technology, namely input/output and cost effectiveness, are also addressed.