rick@cs.arizona.edu (Rick Schlichting) (12/06/90)
[Dr. David Kahaner is a numerical analyst visiting Japan for two-years under the auspices of the Office of Naval Research-Asia (ONR/Asia). The following is the professional opinion of David Kahaner and in no way has the blessing of the US Government or any agency of it. All information is dated and of limited life time. This disclaimer should be noted on ANY attribution.] [Copies of previous reports written by Kahaner can be obtained from host cs.arizona.edu using anonymous FTP.] To: Distribution. From: David Kahaner ONR Asia [kahaner@xroads.cc.u-tokyo.ac.jp] Re: GMD Office in Tokyo Date 7 Dec 1990 SUMMARY: The German National Research Center for Computer Science (GMD), Gesellschaft fuer Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung, has a liaison office in Tokyo which was established about 15 years ago. It has an annual budget of about $1.5 million US. Its basic functions are described. German National Research Center for Computer Science Tokyo Bureau German Cultural Center Akasaka 7-5-56 Minato-ku, Tokyo 107 Tel: (03) 3586-7104, Fax: (03) 3586-7187 Director: Dr. Ulrich Wattenberg (Physics) Deputy Diretor: Dr. Eckart Bierdumpel (Economics) Office Manager: Mr. Chris Webers (Physics) I learned about this office, because Dr. Thomas Hagemann was on my mailing list for reports. At that time Dr. Hagemann was at GMD in Germany; he is now transferred to the liaison office here in Tokyo. Dr. Hagemann has been very helpful in providing information to me and correcting details of this report. GMD is jointly "owned" by the Federal Republic, and the Ministries of Science and Research of two German states. They support a collection of labs, research institutes, computer centers, etc., at seven locations in Germany together totaling about 1400 people (about 850 are in their main office). Total GMD budget for 1990 is about 160M German Marks. GMD performs research in the general area of information technology, which includes hardware devices, applied mathematics, computer science, etc. They are also involved in lab to industry activities and have an Institute for Technology Transfer. I have not visited GMD, only the Tokyo office, but brochures they provided to me mention the following topics. (1) Operates in the field of conflict existing between science, manufactures, and users (2) Make the results obtained available for new production processes, products, and services (3) National cooperation with industry, universities, users, as well as international cooperation, not restricted by short-term economic constraints and can therefore pursue long-term aims and break new ground in research and development work even if this involves a high risk. GMD literature specifically points out various US universities as well as Japan, Brazil and PR China as places where some of this international cooperation is taking place, beside the intensive cooperation within the European Community (ESPRIT projects, etc.). GMD also initiated the foundation of the International Computer Science Institute (ICST, headed by Jerome A. Feldman) at University of California, Berkeley, a basic research institute for massively parallel systems, distributed systems, and the foundations of informatics. The liaison office in Tokyo has three to four professionals. At the moment there are four, one is to rotate back to GMD February 1991. Three have PhDs, in physics, economics, and mathematics. (The Director, Dr. Wattenberg) was away from the office when I visited. A German speaking Japanese administrative staff perform "research" and other tasks, and one person is also responsible for gathering and distributing government and other difficult to get documents relating to information technology. GMD also has a Washington office, larger than the one in Tokyo. The Director has been here since the office's inception, about 15 years. The remaining professional staff come for periods of 3-5 years. Except for the Director, all of them expect to go back to an administrative arm of GMD. During the first six months of a new person's tour he/she spends about two days each week for two months each at different Japanese public organizations affiliated with MITI, including MITI, Japan Information Processing Developmnet Center (JIPDEC) which administers some of the MITI projects including ICOT, at least in the initial phase, and the Database Promotion Center (DPC). (This is permitted because the liaison office has the official sanction of both the German and Japanese governments.) This gives new staff an opportunity to meet many key people and get national perspective. It is a tremendous orientation opportunity that would have been very valuable to me (still would be, even after a year.) This, plus the continuity provided by the Director's long tenure assures that the staff do not step on each other's toes. The remaining three days each week are spent sharpening language skills, and also doing "real" work. The main focus of the office is claimed to be research in computing, but they are also watching new releases in supercomputing, semiconductor technology, etc., that have commercial value for their labs back home. Although there is a science councillor in the German Embassy, some computing related liaison functions are handled in this office. The office subscribes to a translation service that provides timely information about information technology news. One of the German professionals is responsible for transmitting a weekly summary, in German, and also providing an up to date list of meetings that have been announced. I think that the news service would be valuable because the compiler is a specialist who can rapidly check questionable or uninteresting items and get additional details when necessary. I was told that our ONR office here tried a news service in the past but it was very expensive and not used much. Perhaps it was too general, or the scientists were not interested. I will consider subscribing to a similar service again to see how useful it would be to me. A major activity of the office is planning a workshop, formally titled "Japan-German Forum on Information Technology", held every 18 months, alternating between Germany and Japan, with about 100 participants. Three topics are dealt with, Microelectronics, Computers, and New Media. The workshop is a closed shop organized at the level of the German and Japanese Governments, and each country is responsible for supporting an appropriate number of their researchers. A Proceedings are produced, but are only circulated to workshop participants, in government circles, and to certain industrial and academic research centers. The small GMD office staff would find it difficult to distribute copies of the individual papers to outside requestors, but attached to this report is a list of titles from the previous workshop to illustrate the material discussed. What is impressive about this list is that the level of papers allows most of them to be of direct interest to not only researchers but to those one step removed. As those of us who attend conferences know, carefully written survey papers are very rare. The office also organizes most scientific visits for GMD staff and also of others from the German research community. The professional staff attend many meetings, participate in lab visits, write reports, etc., very much like I do. To the best of my knowledge their reports are only distributed internally. The office is housed in the German cultural center. GMD pay no rent for most of their space, but one overflow office is required and is expensive. The office has an internal computer network so that staff can communicate, print, etc. The office manager backs up files each week. They also have available electronic mail in three separate forms, (1) a commercial local line to a service that allows them to contact GMD directly, (2) a commercial mail service, and (3) an x-400 mail service at a local commercial computer that is also connected to GMD. Their news translation services are sent to them electronically by (2) above. Current plans are to become a node on the rapidly growing Japanese equivalent of Internet. To maintain this requires a high level of sophistication. Luckily, each of the professionals is interested in computing and so they are willing and eager to take on this responsibility. (An equivalent activity in my office could be done but might be difficult because of the wide range of computer interests and expertise within the scientific staff.) The GMD offices are attractive although not extravagant, looking more or less like those in the US Embassy. Because they are in the cultural center, and open to everyone, they have a very benign feeling. This is helped by being next door to the equivalent of the German NSF, which is responsible for more general scientific exchanges. Overall the offices give a very positive impression, in a country where these things count for more than they do in the U.S. The acting Director informed me that a very rough estimate for their annual budget is $1.5 million US. For comparison, I am told that the equivalent ONR Asia budget is about $1.0 million US, although I am sure that an accurate comparison would require much more care. Some the professionals have children of school age and this causes serious logistical problems. The only German school is in an expensive area of Tokyo, but will move out to Yokahama next year. This requires a long commute, but seems to be necessary as this is the only school that will prepare the children for the German exam system. If school were not a problem, housing could be found nearby, much as for U.S. Embassy staff. This office impressed and surprised me, particularly the level of commitment with which a government lab is going after scientific information, research, and commercial opportunities. There are aspects of its operation that we should study carefully. This would be a worthwhile and easily arranged place for Western scientists to visit. What follows is a summary of papers and speeches from the Germany-Japan Forum on Information Technology 1990. The list below gives titles only and should be thought of as providing a sense of level and composition of the program. A star (*) after a title indicates that the paper was from a Japanese participant. The Forum was organized over a five day period as follows. Two keynote speeches. Three parallel workshops on New Media, Computers, and Semiconductors. Two plenary sessions on Research Cooperation, and Workshop Summaries. Technical visits. Keynote Speeches. Computation in Neural Nets Recent Trends in Optical Fiber Communications Research: Increasing Resemblance with Radio Communications (*) New Media Workshop Three Dimensional Imaging and Television State of the Art in Japan (*) State of the Art in Germany Two-Channel 3D-TV Using Polarizing Glasses, with demo 3D Display System with Motion Parallax and its Visual Effects (*) Discussion about steps towards collaboration Application of Neural Computing to Speech Recognition State of the Art in Germany A Neural Network Model Extracting Features from Speech Signals (*) Speech and Neural Networks Computer Workshop Neurocomputing, Theoretical Models, Applications to Optimization and Learning Problems, Pattern Recognition Pattern Recognition with Dynamical Neural Nets Character Recognition with Artificial Neural Networks (*) Relation between the Approaches in Pattern Recognition and Neural Net Computations Mobile Robot Control by Neural Networks (*) Biological and Artificial Neural Networks for Motor Control Man Machine Communication Interfaces Standards, Applications and Perspectives Outline of FRIEND'21 Project (*) Object-Oriented User Interfaces with Standard Functions Approach to Continuous Speech Recognition using Time-Delay Neural Networks and Learning Vector Quantization (*) Discussion about steps towards collaboration Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) State of the Art in Germany A Future Flexible Transport Network Based on ATM Techniques (*) Discussion about steps towards collaboration Intelligent Picture Coding Intelligent Image Coding for Future Human Communication Systems (*) Object-Oriented Analysis-Synthesis Coding of Moving Pictures Discussion about steps towards collaboration Semiconductor Workshop Contamination Control The Impact of Impurities in Chemicals on the Performance of DRAM's In Situ Characterization Si MBE by Microprobe RHEED (*) Depth Profile Analysis by Secondary Neutral Mass Spectrometry Contamination Control in VLSI Wafer Processing (*) Present States and Future Needs of Impurity Analysis in Silicon Wafer Processing Mesoscopic Systems Individual Interface Defects and Noise in Sub-mu MOSFETs Mesoscopic Electronics (*) Two-Dimensional Mesoscopic Systems of Compound Semiconductors Atomic Layer Epitaxy by Chloride Gas Sources (*) Nanolithography Principles for Mesoscopic Systems Discussion Neural Networks Fuzzy Logic and Neural Networks in CMOS Technology Neural Devices and Networks (*) Hardware Implementation of Artificial Neural Networks Optical Neural Computing (*) Neural Networks and Fuzzy Logic Fully Digital Neuro-Chip (*) -------------END OF REPORT-----------------------------------------------