tions are not identical to parallel computations or always related to better performance 
of a parallel inference machine. In general, I view the ideas and the experiments on 
concurrency as brilliant and a very successful part of the FGCS project. The PIMOS 
system itself is unique! 

2.3 Knowledge Base Management Software (KBMS) and Ba-
    sic Artificial Intelligence 

The methodology and general principles as well as the application experiments used 
in the FGCS project are very interesting. In particular, the application experiments 
have been useful in the field of artificial intelligence. Several special purpose languages 
have been developed for various applications e.g., CIL for natural language processing. 
There is also more basic AI research e.g., on theorem proving, hypothetical reasoning, 
analogy and non-monotonic reasoning. These are areas where results from logic pro-
gramming have made several interesting contributions to the AI field recently. The 
results of the FGCS project make this progress even stronger. 

2.4 Knowledge Programming Software and Programming 
    Methodology 

Beside the development of the concurrent languages there are also several other im-
portant results on programming methodology mainly building on results in the areas 
of: constraint programming [16], partial evaluation [17], meta programming, and pro-
gram transformation. Several of these research results are superb, and have positioned 
Japanese research at the frontier. Some of these results could also play an important 
role for future software engineering. In fact, this methodology is particularly significant 
for the FGCS project since it could become a bridge between (declarative) logic pro-
gramming and efficient parallel inference machines e.g., by automatically transforming 
logic specifications into parallel logic programs. 

2.5 Experimental Parallel Inference Software 

The project shows several fascinating choices of applications e.g., in legal reasoning 
that are impressing. The applications often demonstrate the parallel power of a PIM. 
Some of them have good potential of becoming blossom applications. This would be 
an interesting result in itself, but the methodology of developing such applications is 
also very interesting. With the PIM: s and the craftsmanship of logic programming 
methodology at hand the researchers at ICOT are well placed to develop extraordinary 
applications. In fact, to take advantage of logic programming and its problem solving 
competence, and the parallel inference machines for efficient computations, may also 
be a good subject for a sequel project. 


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