thole@ascom.uucp (Johan Thole) (10/27/89)
At the moment I'm doing a practical training at Ascom Tech, Solothurn.
The goal of the project which I'm working on is the development of
an expert system on a portable device. To achieve this, I'm looking for
hardware that is suitable for AI applications.
Lately I heard something of the development of a Prolog Chip. If
anyone knows more about that subject I would be very grateful to hear.
I am also interested in other AI hardware, Prolog Abstract Machines
and related topics. If you have any references about those subjects
I would be very glad to receive them. Please contact me directly by
mail and I will put abstracts on the net.
Johan Thole
Ascom Tech AG
Ziegelmattstrasse 1-15
4503 Solothurn
Switzerland
thole@ascom.uucpvanroy@bellatrix.uucp (11/10/89)
Jim Hunt (hunt@ernie.berkeley.edu) mentions: >The original PLM group has all but disbanded here. >Al Despain is now at U.S.C., despain@troy.usc.edu >Yale Patt is now at U. Michigan, patt@crim.eecs.umich.edu > >Peter Van Roy is still here, vanroy@ernie.Berkeley.EDU This is true; Al Despain and Yale Patt have both moved away from Berkeley. However, the current Aquarius group at Berkeley is still active in Prolog architecture research, working with Al Despain at USC, not yet disbanded (as far as I can tell ;-) ). Some of the original PLM people have graduated, including Tep Dobry, Barry Fagin, and Wayne Citrin. We are currently building a new Prolog chip, the BAM chip, trying to learn from the past. The idea is to find the minimal extension to a general-purpose architecture that's necessary for high performance of Prolog, without compromising general-purpose speed. The new chip was designed together with the compiler, and we are trying to do as much as possible in software. There's been lots of interaction between compiler and architecture design. It seems to be that much is possible in software, but that a small but crucial 'kernel' of hardware is needed for the highest performance. We have been working on this project for about a year now, and we should have some hard numbers in a few months to corroborate or to disprove this statement. The design itself is independent of the PLM and Xenologic, but we have done lots of measurements of the VLSI-PLM. The problem is that some of the statistics change when we move to a different execution model. But lots of useful information is still there for the picking. Peter Van Roy Aquarius Project