Some Thoughts on the FGCS Project[*]

Rick Stevens
Argonne National Laboratory

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+ Are the resulting systems so much easier to use that people will immediately 
switch from conventional computing systems?                      Answer: NO 

+ Does special-purpose hardware give KBS a performance advantage over general-
purpose hardware?                                                Answer: NO 

+ Can logic programming and KBS be applied to variety of applications areas? 
                                                       Answer: PROBABLY YES 

+ Is the world likely to adopt KBS systems as a major alternative to object-oriented 
systems development environments for non-numerical computing? 
                                                        Answer: PROBABLY NO 

+ Can logic programming and KBS open a new world of applications areas with 
the same effect on society (and markets) as numerical computation did in the 1950s 
and 1960s?                                        Answer: TOO EARLY TO TELL 

+ Did the FGCS project succeed in giving Japan new visibility in the world com-
puter science community?                             Answer: ABSOLUTELY YES 

To get the answers to these questions required much effort and resources. Japan 
was the only country willing to take the risk and to invest in obtaining these answers. 
The need to take risks and to try to do something new is essential. The United States 
and Europe have in many respects lost the ability to take these risks as a normal 
part of doing research. Perhaps as a result of economic decline or the collective loss 
of imagination, U.S. companies and government have failed to remain on the leading 
edge of risk-taking in large projects. I hope that Japan does not get discouraged by the 
international criticism of FGCS to abandon risky projects. Perhaps the RWC project 
is a step in the direction away from risk taking. I don't know for sure, however. 

Recommendations. 

I would like to make a few specific recommendations regarding the future of ICOT 
and the basic research agenda developed during the past ten years. 

First, I think Japan should establish long-term funding for basic research in com-
puter science and focus this work on three areas: 

      1. Parallel processing, performance evaluation, etc. 
      2. Knowledge-based programming systems 
      3. Combination of symbolic and numerical computation 

Second, MITI-with the new policy for software distribution-can alter the view of 
U.S. and European governments by making all basic research results publicly available 


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