STARAN might be the first commercially available computer designed around an associative memory

Associative memory

Associative memory may refer to:* A type of memory closely associated with neural networks.* A recent technology that involves creating a memory of multiple databases, both structured and unstructured data, and making associations in a manner that is similar to the human brain's memory functions.**...

. The STARAN computer was designed and built by Goodyear Aerospace Corporation. It is a Content Addressable Parallel Processor

Content Addressable Parallel Processor

A Content Addressable Parallel Processor is a type of parallel processor which uses content-addressing memory principles. CAPPs are intended for bulk computation. The syntactic structure of their computing algorithm are simple, whereas the number of concurrent processes may be very large, only...

(CAPP), a type of parallel processor

Parallel computing

Parallel computing is a form of computation in which many calculations are carried out simultaneously, operating on the principle that large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which are then solved concurrently . There are several different forms of parallel computing: bit-level,...

 which uses content addressable memory

Content-addressable memory

Content-addressable memory is a special type of computer memory used in certain very high speed searching applications. It is also known as associative memory, associative storage, or associative array, although the last term is more often used for a programming data structure...

. STARAN is a single instruction, multiple data

SIMD

Single instruction, multiple data , is a class of parallel computers in Flynn's taxonomy. It describes computers with multiple processing elements that perform the same operation on multiple data simultaneously...

 array processor with a 4x256 1-bit processing element (PE) computer. The STARAN machines became available in 1972.

Goodyear Aerospace later developed the MPP

Goodyear MPP

The Goodyear Massively Parallel Processor was amassively parallel processing supercomputer built by Goodyear Aerospacefor the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.It was designed to deliver enormous computational power at lower cost than...

based on similar principles but with a larger and wider processor array.