This disclosure relates to a storage system employing a serial periodic memory as the storage mechanism. The storage mechanism has one or more control and access ports which control data transmission to and from the storage mechanism, each port including input and output devices associated with a data track of the storage mechanism. A queue shift register is coupled between the input and output devices to receive previously stored information characters which are to be temporarily held when newly received information characters are to be written into the storage media. Control of the system resides in the control ports and is activated by commands from the external sources. A character set is employed which includes a beginning delimiter character and an ending delimiter character such that information segments may be of any length up to the capacity of the storage mechanism. The system control ports manage, among other things, the explicit representation of the beginning and end of strings of data and the decomposition of strings into substrings, the automatic allocation and reclamation of unused storage space as strings of data increase or decrease in size, and the permission or prohibition of access to data strings depending on the requestor's identity. Data strings may be accessed according to their order or by symbolic addressing.
An information handling apparatus capable of having a large number of input/output ports includes a plurality of independent processors connected to respective positions around a plurality of closed rings of shifting registers arranged in parallel which form the main storage medium for the apparatus.
A variable field storage station having a control or access port and a periodic recirculating memory. A character set is employed which includes beginning delimiter and ending delimiter characters such that data in the form of structures and substructures therein can be nested to any level. One or more cursors are employed to specify storage locations between structures and substructures in which additional structures or substructures may be added. If data currently resides at that location it is read out and restored at new locations. When a structure or substructure is deleted, that space is allocated to other structures or substructures. In this manner, nested fields can be expanded or contracted as required.
An information transferring apparatus comprises a central processing unit, and an input/output unit, a first-in first-out stack having a plurality of memory elements connected in series and being disposed between the central processing unit and the input/output unit, a command register which is set to a predetermined state under program control by the central processing unit, and a control circuit which receives a signal produced from the command register when the command register is set to a predetermined state and applies a signal designating the memory element which is to be the first memory element of the first-in first-out stack from which information is to be transferred and permits the information stored in the first memory element to be read out directly to the input/output unit.
A CCD (charge coupled device) RAM (random access memory) includes a plurality of "rings" of serially connected CCDs in which digital information recirculates. A combinational decoder selects one of the plurality of rings by decoding a first group of binary address inputs. Each ring includes a plurality of input/output circuits coupled to associated "taps", each tap being coupled between an input and an output of a CCD regeneration cell. An address addition circuit includes a counter which counts at the same rate that data shifts through each of the rings and has a plurality of taps spaced at the same intervals (numbers of intervening CCD cells) as the taps in each of the rings. The counter outputs are decoded to provide a first internal address corresponding to the location of a fictitious tag bit in a ring with reference to an initial reference bit in a ring.
A memory system for storing and retrieving data sequences of symbols in response to a query sequence. Each of the data sequences and the query sequence is made up of three types of symbols, constants, delimiters, and variables. A data sequence is retrieved in response to a query sequence if the two sequences can be made identical by replacing each variable in each sequence by constants or combinations of constants and delimiters, said combinations beginning and ending with a delimiter. The data sequences are stored in a circulating memory store in which each symbol periodically passes by a number of Tap points at which it is available for reading. Each of the Tap points contains a processor which is capable of comparing the stored data sequences with the query sequence. A unique sub-system is provided for entering new data sequences into the circulating memory store without interrupting the operation of the data retrieval functions. This data entry technique automatically collects fragmented storage areas which were to small to store the new data sequence and combines these into a larger space into which the new data sequence is inserted.
