String-processing chip designed in VLSI

A data path suitable for a string-processing machine has been designed, for fabrication in n MOS VLSI. The machine, which is called Henry, is suitable for recognising patterns, and for making insertions and deletions within a string of characters. It is designed to be `byte-sliced¿¿, and a production Henry would process a whole line of characters in parallel. Associated with each byte is a mask bit, whose purpose is to allow scanning and editing operations to be performed selectively on any desired parts of a string. Henry supports a general way of setting these masks, which adds great power to its string-processing capabilities, yet is extremely simple to implement in the technology used. The paper includes a comparison with earlier designs aimed at carrying out a similar function.