The PAN System and the WINA Project

The PAN system is a parallel computer architecture implementing a large associative memory, which is realized as a large network of simple artificial neurons. PAN IV realizes a 256K×4K binary memory matrix and contains 4K parallel processors. The WINA project, sponsored by the BMFT, investigates the integration of neural networks and knowledge-based systems. The elementary neural components in the hybrid WINA architecture are a neural associative memory (e.g. the PAN system) and a Kohonen map or a similar neural clustering algorithm. Our main research objectives are: (i) studying the interaction of neural and rule-based components in a prototypical hybrid system, (ii) developing new designs for special hardware for parallel processing in all components of the system, (iii) building an application-oriented information retrieval system based on the PAN architecture.