fpst@hubcap.clemson.edu (Steve Stevenson-Moderator) (04/18/88)
[ Once again, I took this from the ailist. Steve]
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From: leff@smu.UUCP (Laurence Leff)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.digest
Subject: Review - Spang Robinson Supercomputing, V2 N2
The Spang Robinson Re[port on Supercomputing and Parallel Processing
February, 1988 Volume 2, Number 2
Lead Article is on "The Parallel Software Picture"
This article discusses varioius "grainiedness" of processing.
25 of Cray's customer's converted to Unix with 50 installations
intending to convert to UNIX. Half of Cray's new orders are UNIX.
The article reports that for fine-grained parallelism (vector
processing), pre-compilers and compilers are extracting most of the available
parallelism.
Companies providing parallelizing tools for vector computers include:
COMPASS, Pacific Sierra Research, Scientific Computer Associates
Coarse-grained optimization is not in good shape (the article has
quotes from many to support these claims).
A "language triangle" is shown where the three viewpoints are
"prescriptive," e. g. machine language, logic programming and
"denotative" e. g. pure lisp or FP. Various languages are put in
the triangle at various places.
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ETA has a contenst where the prize is an ETA 10P to a high school.
ETA will pay the costs including electricity for two years.
The high schools participating will be submitting a project done
by a three student team.
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Cray Announcements
Cray announced a top of the line Y-MP 832, a DS-40 disk system and
the FEI-3 interface. The computer is 30 times the speed of the original CRAY-1.
The price is twenty million.
The FEI-3 interfaces Ethernet to the Cray.
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Shorts
Floating point system appointed HOward Thrailkill as its new CEO.
James R. Newcomb, who headed up the PDA international (mechanical
engineering CADCAM) is now vice president for strategic software
business development for Ardent Computers.
Celerity has dropped its vector-scalar 6000 lines and laid off 70 people
out of 100.
Sequent reported a 92 percent increase in revenues. It had 38.5 revenue
and 4 million in profits.
Cray Research made 687 million and installed a total of 55 computer systems.
BMW has bought a Cray X-MP/28.
Multiflow now has an installed based of 19.
The United Kingdom's Meteorological Office has bought an ETA10-E.
Supertek, a Cray compatible manufacturer, has raised at least four
million in its second financing round.
National Science Foundation has selected MERIT to manage the
implementation of the NSFNet backbone center. IBM will contribute
packet switching hardware nad MCI will provide T1 circuits.
Oregon State has sponsored formation of the Oregon Institute for
Advanced Computing which is affiliated with the Oregon Graduate Center.
Cydrome's dataflow unit has achieved 10.4 Megaflops on the Linpack 100x100
test and 3.7 for the Livermore Fortran Kernals. System costs $575,000.
Encore has announced a 4 MIPS entry level system for $89,000.
Alliant introduced the FX/40 and FX/80.
The FX/80 is rated at 65MFLOPS for the 1000 x 1000
Linpack measure.
San Diego Scientific Computing System has announced the SCS-30 XM a machine that
delivers 75 percent of the performance of an SCS-40 at 60 percent of the price.
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Summary of Spang Robinson Report on Artificial Intelligence
Volume 4, No. 2, February 1988
Lead article is on "Who's Buying AI in 1988"
AI Users in National Institutes for Health and National Library of
Medicine have "not had their AI efforsts substantially affected by
the cuts so far. In fact, NLM is actively recruiting AI programmers."
The Aerospace Daily (12/21/87) said "Artificial Intelligence may turn out
to be the most pivotal technology of this century."
"Equitable Life has disbanded its entire R&D group, including AI. The
trader's workstation, the hot topic of yesteryear, appears to be a taboo
subject these days. And a large number of resuems are circulating from
financial services AI programmers."
The number of insurance companies in AI grows almost daily. Price
Waterhouse, for example, has opened an AI research center in Menlo
Park, CA. Arthur ADL intends to double its AI staff by the end of
1988. Coopers and Lybrand will shortly open two more AI field offices."
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Applications
Westinghouse Electric Corporation has developed an on-line system for
monitoring plant chemistry in nuclear power plants.
General Electric implemented PHASEID to identify phases in the
nickel-based superalloy, Inconel 718 in Exsys. It uses Rockwell
Hardness, optical metallography and energy dispersive spectroscopy.
(D. J. Parker, J. M. Arde, Jr. and S. T. Wlodek)
Canadian Pacific developed an expert system to analyze oil samples
form a diesel locomotive. It interprets the data from a spectrometer.
The system contains 490 rules and has analyzed 10,000 samples and
is now deployed at five sites. The system is being marketed to other
railroads. A mechanic decided to disregard the recommendations of the
system causing a $250,000 failure.
Texas Instrumetns developed a technicians assistant to handle epi reactors,
used in semiconductor manufacturing. The system has saved
at least $80,000 per year.
by improving mean-time-to-repair by 34 per cent and mean-time-between-failures
by 44 per cent. It handles 95 percent of the problems. It uses a
database of failures. The success of the project lead
to new projects for proble station repair, sputtering
stations, dry etchers and a compression nitride depositon system.
50,000 plus PC-based expert systems shells of various types
have been sold.
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Review of DEC's expert system seminar.
This seminar approaches "cultural planning" It has case study approach
and discusses eight different models of organizational changes.
A consulting failure was described where AI was brought in to
fix a failing business unit using expert system technology.
DEC believes that since expert systems distribute knowledge, they tend
to decentralize the orgaization and distribute power. The course costs
$2,000 and in the opinion of the review, "well worth the price of
admission."
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Discusson on Teknowledge. It has layed off 30% of its employees
and will become an AI services company. It lost eight million
due to costs from "tool products."
They will not do the data base integration and application
packages of Copernicus and will not sell it through its direct
sales force. It will continue to maintain M.1 and S.1.
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Shorts:
Inference is founding a consortium including current
customers to develop expert systems for IBM mainframes.
They will be porting ART to Hewlett-Packard 9000 workstations.
Prophecy will market Contessa, ak nowledge-based applicatoin generator
for financial services, on the Sun-3's and Sun-4's.
IFPS/plus is a version of the famous financial modelling system IFPS
which has artifical intelligence language capability. It will be
available on Apollo computers.
Dec's internal ROI on Ai applications is 200 to 300 percent.
Intellicorp announced a $972,000 loss for quarter ending December 31, 1987.
Revenues were five million..
Russell Notsker and Brian Sear (CEO and COO, respectively) have
resigned fro
m Symbolics. For the second quarter, the company lost
fifteen million dollars on 23 million in revenue which included
a restructuring charge of 12 million.
Carnegie Group has added tools to Knowledge Craft to have
displays of dial meters and thermometers and maintenance of a calendar
of events.
UNISYS is setting up an AI systems family so it can be a one -source
vendor for AI applicatoins.
The Commerce Department reports that there 2000 to 3000 LISP programmers
in the United States. They make between $50,000 and $100,00 and
continuue to be in short supply.