Yes it is a pure ANN—according to my use of the term ANN (arguing over definitions is a waste of time). ANNs are fully general circuit models, which obviously can re-implement any module from any computer—memory, database, whatever. The defining characteristics of an ANN are—simulated network circuit structure based on analog/real valued nodes, and some universal learning algorithm over the weights—such as SGD.
You could say that any machine learning system is an ANN, under a sufficiently vague definition. That’s not particularly useful in a discussion, however.
You could say that any machine learning system is an ANN, under a sufficiently vague definition. That’s not particularly useful in a discussion, however.