INDEX-FREE FULL-TEXT SEARCH FUNCTION INSTALLED INTO OPTICAL DISK DRIVE

An optical disk drive, equipped with additional SCSI commands for full -text search is developed. By hierarchical search architecture of para llel hardware, firmware and software, the system filters information a lmost at the disk-read speed. The basic search process is executed by a search engine sharing the function with a portion of the error-corre cting LSI installed into the optical disk controller. The basic search performance of the developed system is 10 to 25 times faster than tha t of software. Also, introduction of an associative table for presearc hing results in performance more than 1000 times faster than that in t he case in which no objective lines are found. Though our system does not have large-scale special-purpose hardware for text search, the ret rieving speed of the free-text database is dramatically improved.