A unification processor based on a uniformly structured cellular hardware
Yasuro Shobatake, Hideo Aiso · ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News · 1986
In this paper, an implementation of unification using a systolic-like method is presented for a VLSI-oriented Prolog machine. Not pointers but a line of symbols and the arity of each symbol are used to express the structure of terms on a uniformly structured cellular hardware. This data structure is demanded by the systolic-like method. Using the systolic-like method, copying structure, and occur check are easily executed during the process of unification. Moreover, searching variable is executed in parallel using a broadcast bus.