Atra - Associative Trace Architecture

  Atra is my independent research project at C-side Laboratory, Japan. The name Atra means Associative Trace Architecture. This research started from Dr. Kaoru Nakano's Associatron . I have been interested in the Associatron for a long time because it is not just a memory model. It has a very simple but important idea. A part can call the whole. A small cue can recall a larger memory. A pattern can connect to another pattern. A memory is not stored in one fixed place, but distributed across the whole system. This is very different from ordinary computers. A conventional computer usually needs an address. It needs to know where the data is. Associative memory begins in a different way. It begins from a cue. That difference is very important to me. Why Associatron still matters Dr. Nakano's Associatron was proposed in 1972. It stores entities as distributed patterns and recalls the whole from a part. If the cue is large, the recall becomes more accurate. If the cue is small, the ...