ZMOB: a new computing engine for AI

Abstract

A new research multiprocessor named ZMOB is described, and its significance to AI research is surveyed and characterized. ZMOB, under current construction and scheduled for completion late Fall 1981. is a 256 processor machine with a high speed, interprocessor communications system called the conveyor belt, a non-blocking, 20 megabyte/second message switcher. Because of its large number of processors, high computational throughput (100 million instructions/sec), large cumulative high speed memory (16 megabytes), high interprocessor communications bandwidth, and external communications and sensing channels, ZMOB opens some new areas of exploration in object-oriented modeling, knowledge-based and domain expert systems, intelligent sensing and robotics, and distributed perceptual and cognitive modeling. The paper attempts to blend a description of ZMOB's hardware with ideas about where and how it fits into various types of AI research.