A massively parallel knowledge-base server using a hypercube multiprocessor

The authors study the parallel implementation of a traditional frame-based knowledge representation system for a general-purpose massively parallel hypercube architecture (such as the Connection Machine). It is shown that, using a widely available parallel system (instead of a special-purpose architecture), it is possible to provide multiple users with efficient shared access to a large-scale knowledge-base. Parallel algorithms are presented for answering multiple inference assert, and retract queries on both single and multiple inheritance hierarchies. In addition to theoretical time complexity analysis, empirical results obtained from extensive testing of a prototype implementation are presented