FGCS Project Evaluation Report
Sten-Ake Tärnlund
1 VISION AND PLANS
The research paradigm of the FGCS project is logic programming [2], a major
breakthrough in computer science and artificial intelligence from the early seventies
going back to some principal notions of resolution logic [3] in the sixties, see professor
Robinson's historical account [4] in the FGCS-92 proceedings. Dr. Fuchi, early to
envision the potential of logic programming, gave together with several colleagues a
research vision [5] based on this paradigm that enthused an entire world. He also
worked out a practical research plan [6] for the FGCS project itself focusing on parallel
inference computing. I shall do my best to evaluate the FGCS project according to
this plan and not the vision that I, however, expect will inspire researchers for many
years to come, as the Hilbert program [7], from almost hundred years ago, still inspires
mathematicians.
2 MAJOR ACHIEVEMENTS
My evaluation will follow the presentations of the FGCS project given at the con-
ference and in the proceedings.
2.1 Parallel Inference Machine (PIM)
The various PIM machines, are the centerpiece of the FGCS project. They differ
somewhat in architecture, which opens up possibilities for experiments. They are all
MIMD machines. A PIM has clusters of processing elements connected in a network
of clusters. It is scalable at the three levels. A prototype machine PIM-m is used for
demonstrations. They are scalable farther than thousand processors. They run the
PIMOS operating system and the KL1 language. The performances of a PIM is about
100 MLIPS, although these LIPS may not quite be the original LIPS, they show that
the FGCS project has more than reached the original bold performance target. More
to the point, we can expect performances beyond the 100 MLIPS up to a GLIPS and
beyond. This performance and these machines are brilliant results and could not have
been taken for granted when the project started. On the contrary, after this project
started other machine ideas have been proposed e.g., the Connection machine [8] in
the US, In contrast, it is a SIMD machine, its network is less scalable and more limited
by communication speed, these factors make it a more special machine for particular
problems. So, the project could have gone wrong, but it didn't and it produced a
- 128 -