Patent ID: 7512571

Claim:
An associative memory device, comprising: an input device for accepting a set or a plurality of sets of input information; one or a plurality of input buffers; the input device being coupled to, or integrated into, the input buffer; a means for transporting the input information to the input buffer; the input buffer being adapted to transform the input information into corresponding sets of complex-valued wave fields as wave-modeled input data; one or a plurality of recording structures, referred to as a cortex; the input buffer being further adapted to propagate the wave-modeled input data to the cortex; the cortex being adapted to associate the desired sets of wave-modeled input data through an invertible mathematical function or operation, thus creating one or a plurality of associations within the cortex; the cortex being further adapted to store the associations in a distributed manner across a cortex surface with other previously stored associations; the cortex being further adapted to form and store linear combinations of associations; an input device being operable to accept one or a plurality of retrieval prompts, referred to as a prompt; the input buffer being operable to transform the prompt into a corresponding set of complex-valued wave fields, as a wave-modeled prompt; the input buffer being operable to propagate the wave-modeled prompt to the cortex; the cortex being operable to cause the wave-modeled prompt to mathematically operate upon the previously stored associations using a de-association operation that is the inverse of that originally used to form the associations; the cortex being adapted to store the wave-modeled prompt with other previously stored associations and wave modeled prompts; a means for the result of the mathematical de-association operation, representing a wave-modeled retrieval, to propagate from the cortex to one or a plurality of output buffers, said output buffer being referred to with the input buffer as the buffers; the output buffer being operable to transform the wave-modeled retrieval into output data; and a means for using control data to provide overall control of the associative memory device.