An efficient algorithm for production systems with linear-time match

Abstract:

Combinatorial match in production systems (rule-based system) is problematical in several areas of production system application: real-time performance, learning new productions for performance improvement. modeling human cognition. and parallelization. The unique-attribute representation in production systems is a promising approach to eliminate match combinatorics. Earlier investigations have focused on the ability of unique-attributes to alleviate the problems caused b~ combinatorial match 1331. This paper reports on an additional benefit of unique-attributes: a specialized match algorithm called Uni-Rete. Uni-Rete is a specialization of the widely used Rete match algorirhm for unique-attributes. The paper presents performance results for Uni-Rete. which indicate over 10-fold speedup with respect to Rete. It also discusses the implications of Uni-Rete for non-unique-attribute systems.