leff@smu.UUCP (Laurence Leff) (01/03/88)
Summary of the Spang Robinson Report, Volume 3 NO. 12, December 1987 The lead article is on Expert Systems Tools. The leader in installations are VP Expert and TI's Personal Consultant with 15,000 and 10,000 installed. Nexpert Object is selling at 125 copies per month. Fusion has 200 units installed while GoldWorks has 500 customers. Software A&E's KES II has sold 500 units and 1.1 million revenue. There is a centerfold table listing characteristics of microcomputer expert system tools including: AIon Development Systems Prices Exsys Professional Features Fusion (First Class) Computer Supported Goldworks Hooks to other Languages and File Formats Guru End User Interface Capabilities Level Five Inferencing Mechanisms supported Nexpert Object Vp Expert KES II Personal Consultant Graphs showing installed base for Expert System Development Tools and product revenues are also provided. *(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(*( Discussion of embedding AI in Conventional Systems The article includes a history of embeddable AI Software. CxPert generates C code. GURU is complete with relational dat base, spread sheet, word processor and communication software. TI now offers a package to allow expert systems built with Personal Consultant or PC Easy to be run on a VAX in C. (_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_ Hecht-Nelson has created a 30 hour videotaped courseware on neural networks. This $5,000 set of tapes of a live classroom is reviewed quite favorably in this issue. _+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+ Shorts: Intellicorp's product revenues grew from 12.9 million to 16 million. In the first quarter of fiscal 1988, KEE on the SUn was the most popular product. They have 18 million in cash and no debt. Teknowledge's Copernicus is a core development and delivery system and a set of AI libraries. The charge will be $15,000 per user for workstations nad up to $90,000 on mainframes. The next issue of Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of ARts and Sciences, is being devoted to Artifical Intelligence. Sun's new SPARC microprocessor uses a tagged memory architecture which is usful for processing AI languages. Intelligent Technology has signed up $35,000,000 in new contract work in the last two months. Arthur D. Little and Carnegie Group has signed up a cooperative marketing agreement. Texas Instruments and DEC are reorganizing their respective AI groups. United Airlines and Texs Instruments have developed a Gate Assignment Display System and interfaces with Unimatic, a flight information database. Combustion Engineering is using Palladian's Operations Advisor for manufacturing problems. Infomart is using GURU, ART and Intellicorp in its factory demonstration. Applications are shipping route automation, product configuration and production scheduling. Richard Fikes has moved from Intellicorp to Price Waterhouse Technology where he will be Princial Scientist. Barry Plotkin is now founder and President of Coherent Thought. By the way, Spang Robinson Reports has a report evaluating PC Expert Systems