A Design for a List Merging Network

In inverted file database systems (and in a number of other applications), much of the processing consists of merging two or more previously sorted lists based on a Boolean expression. Conventional general purpose computers are not well suited for this type of operation, with even well written programs utilizing less than 10 percent of the available memory capacity for actual processing of data. However, a low-cost special purpose backend processor can be used to efficiently handle the list merging operations, freeing the conventional processor for other uses.