Microway MS-160SE

Whether you are looking for a needle in a haystack or just the number of times that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob appear in the Bible, you need an MS-160 Search Engine (SE). The MS-160SE combines a free text search engine with a RAM DISK capable of reading 160 megabytes per second. Searches are performed using exact or fuzzy templates. If you are interested in taking statistics, the board will report the number of times your template was matched. If you want to see each reference, our software will stop the processor and let you see it.

MS-160SE search templates are specified using "regular expressions." Each byte in the expression can specify a single value or a range defined by an upper and lower bound. Up to eight 32-byte wide templates can be used together to form complex search patterns. Alternatively, all eight templates can be used to define a large template that can be up to 256 bytes in length. The Microway MS-160 processor features 512 comparators and 64-bit wide memory to search your data at 160 megabytes per second. The MS-160 also contains a data router and event detector which are controlled hy our software. The throughput of its 512 specialized integer units is 10 billion compares per second, which is the equivalent free text searching speed of five hundred 486s or a 10,000 MIPS processor!

The MS-160SE is just as at home in the laboratory as it is in a law office or library. Examples of its use include genetic engineering, meteorological science, image processing and the analysis of spectra of any kind. Numerous applications exist in law enforcement, from finding missing persons and vehicles to analyzing finger prints. The board can also be used as a part of a data logger or data feed parser, triggering on pre-defined events. When used as a 2D filter, the template becomes a 256 by 256 1-bit grid or a combination of eight 256 by 32 1-bit grids.

The heart of the board, the MS-160 processor, can also be used to build instruments, such as logic analyzers, or intelligent hard disk controllers which include a text filter. Microway's engineering staff can help you to implement such designs.

The MS-160SE can be interfaced from PC languages, such as Microsoft C, or you can use canned applications. A Microway Text Retrieval package comes with the card. This package is ideal for law offices or libraries which must be able to instantly make complex searches on data bases downloaded from CDs or hard disks. A complete document management package is available which can handle text and images together, as well as a TCP/IP network interface that makes it possible to build a "Search Server."