Expert systems are a form of highly understandable artificial intelligence that allow humans to trace the decision-making processes that are used. While they are typically software implemented and use an iterative algorithm for rule-fact network processing, this is not the only possible implementation approach. This paper implements and evaluates the use of hardware-based expert systems. It shows that they work accurately and can be developed to parallel software implementations. It also compares the processing speed of software and hardware-based expert systems, showing that hardware-based systems typically operate two orders of magnitude faster than the software ones. The potential applications that hardware-based expert systems can be used for and the capabilities that they can provide are discussed.