HFischer%USC-ECLB@sri-unix.UUCP (03/23/84)
From: Herm Fischer <HFischer@USC-ECLB>
[Forwarded from the Prolog Digest by Laws@SRI-AI.]
[...]
IBM was kind enough to let us have PC/IX for today, and we
brought up UNSW Prolog. With a minor exception the code
and makefiles were compatible with PC/IX. (They have frustrated
me for a whole year, being incompatible every PCDOS "C" compiler
from Lattice onward.)
PC/IX and Prolog are neatly integrated; all Unix features, and
even shell calls, can be made within the Prolog environment.
Even help files are included. It is kind of nice to be tracing
away and browse and modify your prolog code within the interpretive
environment, using the INed (nee rand) editor and all the other
Unix stuff.
The 64 K limitation of PC/IX bothers me, more emotionally than
factually, because only one of my programs couldn't be run today.
I'm sure I will get really upset unless I find some hack around
this limitation.
A benchmark really surprises me. The Zebra problem (using
Pereira's solution) provides the following statistics:
DEC-2040 6 seconds (if compiled) (Timed on TOPS-20)
42 seconds (if interpreted) ( " " " )
VAX-11/780 204 secs (interpreted) (UNSW) (Timed on Unix Sys III)
IBM PC/XT 544 secs (interpreted) ( " ) (Timed on " " " )
The latter 2 times are wall-clock with no other jobs or users
running, and these two Prologs were compiled from the same source
code and make file! The PC/IX was CPU-bound, and its disk never
blinked during the execution of the test.
-- Herm Fischer