Associative Processors (APs), first introduced in the 1970s, have recently re-emerged as an attractive concept for in-memory processing. An AP 1) stores data in vector form, 2) can compare a key against all vector elements in parallel (search), and 3) can update all matching elements in bulk with a new value (update). APs employ sequences of search-update pairs to perform arithmetic and logical operations on very long vectors (more than 10,000 elements). 

 As part of the Center for Research in Intelligent Storage and Processing-in-Memory (CRISP), we developed the Content-Addressable Processing Engine (CAPE), a general-purpose AP core that is programmable via a standard RISC-V instruction set architecture. We have shown that CAPE is highly versatile and can greatly accelerate a broad range of data-parallel workloads, including databases for analytics (OLAP). In this talk, I will present the fundamentals of associative processing and how we leveraged them to design CAPE. I will also discuss how, as part of the ACE Center for Evolvable Computing, we are looking at multiple scenarios where this paradigm holds potential for higher performance via distributed in-memory processing.

 José Martínez is the Lee Teng-hui Professor of Engineering and the Senior Associate Dean for Diversity & Academic Affairs in the College of Engineering at Cornell University. He is co-PI and Associate Director of the NSF Science and Technology Center for Research on Programmable Plant Systems (CROPPS, 2021-2026, $25M) and co-PI and Theme Lead of the DARPA/SRC Center for Evolving Computing (ACE, 2023-2027, $31M). From 2018 to 2023, he was co-PI and Assistant Director of the DARPA/SRC Center for Research in Intelligent Storage and Processing in Memory (CRISP, $30M).

 His research has received several awards over the years; among them: two IEEE Micro Top Picks papers; an HPCA Best Paper award, as well as MICRO and HPCA Best Paper nominations; an NSF CAREER Award; two IBM Faculty Awards; and a Distinguished Educator Award by the University of Illinois’ Computer Science Department.

 On the teaching side, he has been recognized with two Kenneth A. Goldman ’71 and one Dorothy and Fred Chau MS’74 College of Engineering teaching awards; a Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Teaching Excellence; thrice as the most influential college educator of a Merrill Presidential Scholar (Andrew Tibbits ’07, Gulnar Mirza ’16, and Angela Jin ’21); and as the student-elected 2011 Tau Beta Pi Professor of the Year in the College of Engineering.

 José is an IEEE Fellow and the elected Vice Chair of ACM's Special Interest Group in Computer Architecture (SIGARCH).