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AIList Digest Volume 4 Issue 051
AIList Digest Wednesday, 12 Mar 1986 Volume 4 : Issue 51
Today's Topics:
Query - Graphical Representation,
News - Turbo Prolog & TI Explorer, Apollo, and Sun Workstations &
AI Hardware Vendor Slugout
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Date: Mon, 10 Mar 86 13:16 EST
From: "Steven H. Gutfreund" <GUTFREUND%umass-cs.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Subject: Request for information
I am looking for a reference. Is there some work that attempts to
produce a comprehensive study of graphical representation (schematics)
that are used by professionals. Examples would be architects, systems
analysts, industrial designers, and logistic planners. There are,
of course, civil engineers who actually go and construct scale models
of things like dams, etc, and conduct their analysis on them. But I
am looking for people who use 2-d and multidimensional paper schematics
for their analyses. Especially interesting are schematics which are not
just passive, but allow the user to carry out graphical analysis on
that chart. Something on the order of a fileVision, except that fileVision
only does data queries.
- Steven Gutfreund
gutfreund@umass-cs.csnet
[I doubt that there is a comprehensive survey, but there are some
partial ones. Woodworth's >>Graphical Simulation<< has a large
section on algebraic geometry, graphical methods for solving
differential equations, etc. I have seen books on nomograms and
a recent book (by James Martin?) on the flowcharts and other diagrams
used by programmers. Control theorists (but not the theoretical
ones!) use pole-zero charts and other graphical aids. Statisticians
use X-Bar/R charts to track quality control, Roman/Latin/etc. squares
to plan experiments, and occassionally dependency graphs to model
causal or correlational linkages. Logicians and circuit designers
use Venn diagrams and Karnaugh maps. There are books on visual thinking
and on graphs and other displays for information transfer. Two recent
books are >>The Elements of Graphing<< by William S. Cleveland and
>>The Visual Display of Quantitative Information<< by Edward R. Tufte.
Does anyone know of other particularly good surveys? -- KIL]
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Date: Wed, 12 Mar 86 01:32 EST
From: Tim Finin <Tim%upenn.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Subject: turbo prolog (again)
Ken and Chuck,
I sent the following message about a newly announced prolog compiler
which did not show up in either mailing list.
From: Tim Finin <Tim@UPenn> on Thu 6 Mar 1986 at 15:51, 13 lines
To: AIlist@sri-ai, PROLOG-REQUEST%su-score.arpa@CSNET-RELAY
Subj: Turbo Prolog
Date: Thu, 6 Mar 86 15:51 EST
Someone gave me a copy of a news item from Electronic Engineering Times of
March 3rd which describes a Prolog compiler for PCs that Borland Int.
(of Turbo Pascal fame) is releasing on April 15th. According to the note,
the price will be $99. Borland claims that it was clocked at 100K lips on
an IBM-PC and 300K lips on an AT! (The benchmark used was described as "a
single rule benchmark"). The dialect is described as "a superset of
Clocksin and Mellish".
The system appears to include an incremental compiler, screen editor,
support for windowing, a module capability, sound primitives and color
graphics primitives.
I assume you both thought it was too much of a plug for a new compiler with
little real significance. I disagree! It is significant for one of two
reasons, as I explain below. Note first that:
1 - Borland is a respected company making software for micros.
Their products, especailly Turbo Pascal, are quite good, widely
used and very cheap. I've seen it claimed that over 500,000
copies of Turbo Pascal have been sold!
2 - Their prolog compiler seems to be reasonable from the point of
view of features.
3 - It's claimed to provide a ORDER OF MAGNITUDE improvement on
performance. The other PC based prolog compiler claim to run
on the order of 10K to 20K Lisp, I think.
4 - They are claiming to sell it at an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE less price
than the other prolog compilers for PCs.
Now - the reasons: either (1) Borland has discovered some very clever tricks
to producing much better compiled code from standard prolog or (2) they are
not playing the benchmarking game fairly. I tend to lean toward (2) but
hope that there may be a fair amount of (1) involved as well. If Turbo
Pascal weren't such a win, I'd have little hope. On the pessimistic side,
Robert Rubinoff sent me the following back-of-the-envelope analysis:
From: Robert Rubinoff <Rubinoff@UPenn> on Fri 7 Mar 1986 at 10:28,
To: Tim Finin <Tim@UPenn>
Subj: Turbo Prolog
100 Klips = .1MHZ. Now assuming that they are only using code within
one segment (which limits you to 64K), the 8088 takes about 3 cycles
for the average register instruction, and about 10-15 cycles + memory
fetch time for a memory instruction. Memory fetches take a few cycles;
I can't find where it says how much; so let's say that it's just enough
to push the average instruction time up to 15 cycles. If 2 out of 3
instructions are register instructions, we get an average of 21/3 or 7
cycles per instruction. (I think my calculations here are probably a
little low).
So if we have a 4MHz 8088, we get an instruction rate of 0.5MHz, or 5
instructions per lip. On an 8MHZ 8088, we get 10 instructions per
inference. That strikes me as not enough. Maybe they're using a
benchmark that doesn't do any unification.
And all of this (at least on the 8088 in the PC, I don't know about the
AT) requires that everything be in the same segment. If you want more
than 64K, you have to go to multiple segments, which slows things down
a lot.
I'm dubious. But we'll see, I guess.
Robert
Anyway, when a respectable, established company offers a basic AI tool which
jumps TWO ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE on the price/performance scale, I think its
news! If a few months we'll either be praising the cleverness of the
Borland programmers or cursing the dishonesty of the Borland marketing
people.
Tim
[Actually, Tim's message was simply the victim of "digest delay"
and of my recent full schedule. It had come to the head of the
queue and would have been sent out today in any case. Most messages
are redistributed within a week, although humor and "special issue"
messages are sometimes saved for two weeks in order to collect a
sufficient number on the same topic. Authors of "commercial
messages" which must be rejected will receive a note from me
(unless the message has already gone out on UUCP net.ai). Tim's
message is well within the limits of acceptability (and usefulness --
thanks, Tim!). The posting which follows is more dubious, but seems
to be forwarded in a spirit of helpfulness rather than commercial PR.
A discussion has just started on WorkS, Human-Nets, and Large-List-People
that may redefine the limits of acceptability, particularly with respect
to including price information. (While price is obviously an important
spec, it has been one of the touchstones for identifying messages
with commercial intent.) -- KIL]
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Date: Tue, 11 Mar 86 08:56 ???
From: "JERRY R. BROOKSHIRE" <BROOKSHIR%ti-eg.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Subject: News Item: TI Explorer, Apollo, and Sun Workstations
The following extracts are from the Texas Instruments
internal electronic news system:
T LE;NEWS.TI.PRODUCTS.A.P01 SLE01
MON., MAR. 10, 1986 PRODUCTS AND TECHNOLOGY SECTION A
TI, APOLLO(R) PROPOSE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ALLIANCE
AUSTIN, TEXAS - Texas Instruments and Apollo Computer Inc. today announced the
intention to enter into marketing, sales and development programs aimed at
bringing "next generation" artificial intelligence (AI) technology to the
engineering workstation market. A letter of intent signed by both companies now
lays the groundwork for the formation of a relationship that would bring TI's
leadership in AI technology to Apollo's industry-leading technical workstation.
As a first step in the proposed alliance, the companies plan to embark on a
cooperative development effort to integrate TI's Explorer(TM) LISP machine into
Apollo's DOMAIN(R) networking environment, allowing AI application developers
using Explorer to coexist on a network of Apollo workstation users. The
announcement comes shortly after Apollo's introduction of a new line of DOMAIN
workstation products.
"Apollo views AI, like graphics, as a technology that is key to a broad
range of technical application areas," said Roland Pampel, Apollo's senior vice
president of technology and marketing.
"When Apollo pioneered the workstation marketplace, the DOMAIN system's
integrated graphics capabilities provided a new dimension for application
developers," said Pampel. "We believe that AI will offer a similar leap in
application development capabilities and user productivity."
W. Joe Watson, vice president of TI's Data Systems Group, explained, "TI
has made substantial investments to build a strong AI technology base and
DSG's commercial AI products have rapidly achieved significant market success.
Teaming up with strong system vendors like Apollo will be a major step toward
expanding the use of our advanced technology in the technical computing market-
place."
Paul Armstrong, Apollo group manager of AI, said, "Many of our customers
and solution suppliers are actively seeking ways to exploit AI technology in a
variety of areas. We are pleased to work with TI in managing the transition to
a new generation of computing."
TI houses one of the largest AI research and development centers in the
world and is a leader in the internal application of AI technologies.
T LE;NEWS.TI.PRODUCTS.A.P03 SLE01
MON., MAR. 10, 1986 PRODUCTS AND TECHNOLOGY SECTION B
TI AND SUN TO LINK AI AND UNIX WORKSTATIONS
AUSTIN, TEXAS - Texas Instruments and Sun Mircosystems(R) announced today that
TI will implement Sun Microsystem's Network File System (NFS) on its
Explorer(TM) artificial intelligence (AI) workstation. The NFS implementation
will allow transparent access to files on Sun's UNIX(TM)-based workstation and
TI's LISP-based Explorer system, providing users with a development environ-
ment that includes both AI and UNIX tools on the same network.
"NFS provides a solution to customers who want to add the Explorer's symbol-
ic processing capability to a network of Sun technical workstations running
under UNIX," said DSG vice president W. Joe Watson. "The combination of these
two complementary computers on a network provides a significant new offering
to industry."
Independent of machine type and operating system, NFS increases the useful-
ness of a local area network by allowing users to easily share information
between computers from different vendors.
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Date: 11 Mar 86 12:46 PST
From: sigart@LOGICON.ARPA
Subject: AI HARDWARE VENDOR SLUGOUT (SDSIGART & IEEE)
San Diego SIGART and San Diego IEEE Computer Society
present an
"AI HARDWARE VENDOR SLUGOUT"
ABOUT THE PROGRAM...Artificial Intelligence(AI) hardware is expensive. AI
hardware vendors are numerous and not in general substitutable. But AI
hardware must be bought to competein the growing AI/expert-systems market.
This vendor gathering will allow participating vendors to describe and
display their wares, challenge each other, and be challenged by the audience.
There will be ample time for individual discussions with vendors.
ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS...Expected participants include Symbolics Inc.,
Lisp Machine Inc.(LMI), Texas Instruments(TI) and Apollo.
TIME/PLACE...Sunday, March 23, 2:00pm at the Mandeville Auditorium at UCSD.
(parking is free and plentiful on Sundays.)
RESERVATIONS/INFORMATION...Reservations are not required. For further
information contact Bart Kosko, (619)457-5550 or Ed Weaver (619)236-5963.
ADMISSION IS FREE.
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End of AIList Digest
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