A Report on My Visit to FGCS'92
Ross Overbeek
understand our culture, etc., while people like myself take only a limited amount of time
to reciprocate, must surely cause some problems). Yet, I cannot help but believe that
the contacts initiated by the FGCS project will gradually produce a lasting benefit.
Specific Advances in the Area of Parallel Processing:
The development of PIMOS, the five PIMS, and the associated applications envi-
ronment is a major achievement. In the case of parallel processing, I believe that it is
likely (but far from certain) that the ideas pioneered by ICOT will play a central role
in the eventual software environments to support applications development. In Europe
and America, these ideas have emerged in the Strand and PCN efforts.
The development of PIMOS could lead to a commercial success, if it is successfully
moved to general-purpose MIMD machines, and if it widely adopted.
In an incident that I deeply regret, I was quoted out of context by a reporter, and
the quote was used in an article critical of the ICOT effort. What I regret is speaking
to the reporter; he chose to completely misrepresent the basic intent of my remarks
that evening. During the day, MITI had announced that it would make the software
developed at ICOT freely available. I have consistently taken the position that ICOT
should make the software available, that it must be ported to general-purpose machines
before it is could possibly be of any commercial significance, and that it would benefit
the Japanese to get the software in use. It should be released free of charge as the
first step in attempting to build an effective solution to the problem of applications
development for parallel processors; the commercial payout of such software will never
be achieved, if it is not first widely adopted. I pointed out the sequence of events
leading to the gradual adoption of UNIX to illustrate what I believe would be the
correct strategy for allowing the software to attain its potential value. The tone and
content of my remarks, as they were reported, were both rude and inappropriate. I do
not believe that I ever spoke them (although I do believe that I expressed the opinion
represented by the quote). In any event it was very foolish to place myself in a position
where I might cause such misunderstandings, even unintentionally.
I do believe that the software and pool of experience represented by PIMOS is a
substantial asset developed by the project.
Advances in Application Areas:
In general, I believe that too little emphasis was placed on building the best versions
of applications on the machines (as opposed to demonstration versions).
However, I have been quite impressed with several specific areas. First, in the
theorem-proving work (which I did not expect to result in substantial advances), the
team did develop a system that proved an open theorem and another system that
could prove a set of difficult theorems that clearly established the group as very serious
indeed. For a group of relatively inexperienced young researchers to have attained this
level of achievement in such a short time is quite remarkable. They have done more
- 91 -