The use of the DAP, a massively parallel computing system, for information retrieval and processing

The DAP is a SIMD system that is marketed as an attached processor to VAX or SUN hosts. The aim is to provide an accelerator to the host with an improvement in price-performance of 2 or 3 orders of magnitude for appropriate problems. Many applications in information retrieval are such appropriate problems. The DAP has an unusual architecture that provides some truly remarkable performance characteristics. Those relevant for many information retrieval tasks are given. Figures for price-performance relative to a conventional minicomputer system are given. The DAP has two or three orders of magnitude better price-performance than conventional systems. Three typical information retrieval tasks are described. In each case performance is compared with conventional machines that are commonly used for these tasks