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From: PEREIRA@SRI-AI.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: Prolog For The Vax
Message-ID: <2585@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 18-Jun-83 15:49:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.2585
Posted: Sat Jun 18 15:49:21 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 29-Jun-83 05:25:37 EDT
Lines: 32

[Reprinted from the PROLOG Digest.]

As a result of the paranoia induced by the Japanese 5th Generation 
proposals, there was a lot of discussion about what the UK should do 
to keep up with the foreign competition in AI and computing in 
general.  Eventually several government initiatives where started, 
amounting to several 100 million dollars spread over five years or so.
In particular, the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC), 
whose closest US analogue is the NSF, started the Intelligent 
Knowledge Based Systems initiative (IKBS), which is applied AI under a
different name (it seems the name "AI" is not very popular in UK 
government and academic circles).  Discussions sponsored by the IKBS 
initiative have decided on a common software base, built around Unix 
{a trademark of Bell Labs.}, Prolog (POPLOG and C-Prolog) and Lisp 
(Franz).  The machines to be used are VAXes and PERQs (the UK computer
company ICL builds PERQs under license, have implemented a derivative 
of Unix on it, so this is a case of "support your local computer 
manufacturer").

The fact that none of the systems mentioned above is nearly the ideal 
for AI research is recognized by many of the UK researchers, but less 
so by the administrators.  Efforts to build a really efficient 
portable compiler-based Prolog that would be for the new machines what
DEC-10/20 Prolog is for the machines it runs on have been hampered by 
the sluggish response of The Bureaucrats, and by uncertainty about how
that huge amount of money was going to be allocated.

However, implementation of a portable compiler - based Prolog is now 
going on at Edinburgh.  Robert Rae is certainly in a better position 
than I to describe how the project is progressing.

-- Fernando Pereira