A parallel unification coprocessor

A parallel unification coprocessor partitioning unification into a match step and a consistency check step and conducting these two steps concurrently in a pipeline fashion is presented. The machine's architecture, algorithm, and processors are described. The machine is simulated at the register transfer level, and the simulation results as well as performance comparisons with two serial unification coprocessors are presented. The parallel unification coprocessor with only two MPs (match processors) was shown to be significantly faster than the two serial coprocessors for compound terms of arities higher than two. The study of the unification of long terms indicated that the coprocessor reaches its peak performance with 3 MPs in most cases. This seems to confirm that the cost of the fourth MP is not justified, and therefore it seems that only three MPs will be needed in the future.<
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