CS286 Assignment 2

Due April 20, 1999

Three pages or so should suffice to answer this question. (This question has been brought back from last year's final, because it was so much fun it deserved more than 45 minutes of thought!)
Rock bands in the 60's and 70's (notably The Beatles in "Strawberry Fields Forever") used a device called the Mellotron: this was a machine with one loop of magnetic tape per key on a piano keyboard. When you pressed a key, the corresponding tape was brought in contact with a tape reader, to produce a sound. The tape was played in a continuous loop until the key was released. The mellotron served as a crude sample-based electronic instrument. (I'm simplifying here a bit -- for more details on the mellotron you could see the Mellotron website; but "roll with" my description for the assignment.)

It has been suggested (just now, in fact) that the mellotron would be an effective data-storage system if a processor and memory were attached to it. Assume that each tape on a mellotron holds 1/88 of a gigabyte, and assume that there are 88 keys on a mellotron. Assume also that an infinitely fast Mellotron-to-chip bus has been developed to deliver data from the mellotron to the chip. Describe how you would deploy a bank of Intelligent Mellotron machines to implement large queries. The I-Mellotron configuration contains many unique features, some of which have not been specified. Do not worry about that -- just state your assumptions and cover as many bases as you can.