Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!gatech!hubcap!fpst From: fpst@hubcap.clemson.edu (Steve Stevenson-Moderator) Newsgroups: comp.parallel Subject: Spang Robinson Reviews Message-ID: <1443@hubcap.UUCP> Date: 18 Apr 88 12:40:19 GMT Sender: fpst@hubcap.UUCP Lines: 201 Approved: parallel@hubcap.clemson.edu [ Once again, I took this from the ailist. Steve] ========================================================================= 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. ************************************************************ 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. &*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&* 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. >)>)>)>)>)>)>)>)>)>)>)>)>)>)>)>)>)>)>)>)>)>)>)>)>)>)>)>)>)>) 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. ========================================================================= 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." &^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^&^ 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. (((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( 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." U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_U_ 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. #@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@ 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.