Searching for similar behavior in previous data plays a key role in fusion research, but can be quite challenging to implement from a practical point of view. This paper describes the design of an intelligent measurement instrument that uses Similar Waveform Recognition Systems (SWRS) to extract knowledge from the signals it acquires. The system is perceived as an Ethernet measurement instrument that permits to acquire several waveforms simultaneously and to identify similar behaviors by searching in previous data using distributed SWRS. The implementation is another example of the advantages that local processing capabilities can provide in data acquisition applications.