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From: jbn@wdl1.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: Re: Workstations vs Timeshare
Message-ID: <845@wdl1.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 8-Nov-85 15:21:26 EST
Article-I.D.: wdl1.845
Posted: Fri Nov  8 15:21:26 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 11-Nov-85 06:00:15 EST
Sender: notes@wdl1.UUCP
Organization: Ford Aerospace, Western Development Laboratories
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Nf-ID: #R:utah-cs:-352800:wdl1:1100028:000:1081
Nf-From: wdl1!jbn    Nov  8 12:10:00 1985

> If you *really* want to do massive computation, get a Cray (as Boyer & 
> Moore are doing for their theorem
> prover).

      The Boyer-Moore theorem prover does not require a Cray.  As the person
who ported it from the Symbolics to the VAX (Franz) and thence to the Sun,
I can report that performance on a diskless 2MB Sun II is quite satisfactory;
the proofs scroll by faster than you can read them.  As a benchmark, I have
run the entire PROVEALL library (263 theorems, through SUBST-OK, for Boyer-
Moore fans) on a Sun II in 8 hours 57 minutes, using Franz Lisp 38.89 on
the SUN.  Considering that in this time the prover is regenerating much 
of number theory from some very basic axioms, this is not a bad showing; 
it's at least an order of magnitude or two above human performance.
I have been toying with the idea of a port to the PC/AT, so that I
can prove theorems at home.
      Incidentally, the stock version of the prover (available from 
BOYER@UTEXAS-20) contains the Franz compatibility fixes, so it can be run
on most reasonable Franz systems.

					John Nagle