This photograph shows most of the RAL site, as viewed from the East. The star-shaped Restaurant and Building R22 can be seen at the bottom right of the picture.
The Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC), which is a public body, was established in 1965. SERC participates in and supports research and development in science and technology. Its supportive role extends to both basic and strategic science. Basic science is curiosity driven and seeks to advance our understanding for broadly defined and long-term ends, rather than for particular and immediate applications. Strategic research is not targeted at specific wealth creation, but lies in areas from which applications may emerge.
SERC promotes research in the universities and polytechnics by grants and studentships. It also supports university research by providing central facilities both nationally and internationally. Particular examples of its international activities are the telescopes in the Canaries and Hawaii, the support of the CERN Nuclear Physics Laboratory in Geneva and Institut Laue Langevin in Grenoble.
In conjunction with other government bodies e.g Department of Trade and Industry, Department of Transport, Teaching Company, it also funds collaborative research between industry and academe under various initiatives such as the Joint Framework for Information Technology, the Link Programme and Teaching Company Scheme.
SERC divides its activities into four main areas supported by separate Boards:
Its total annual budget for 1990-91 is around £440m. As at 31 March 1989 it employed about 2700 staff and in 1988 supported a further 7400 on grants in universities and polytechnics.
The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) is the largest establishment of SERC. It is situated half way between Oxford and Newbury, just off the A34, close to the Berkshire Downs.
The national support for research is provided by central facilities at RAL and three other smaller Establishments, at Daresbury, Edinburgh and the Royal Observatory, which has recently moved to Cambridge University. Of the four establishments RAL covers the widest spectrum of SERC's involvement in research. Major facilities at RAL include a large Spallation Neutron Source (ISIS), which was opened by the Prime Minister in 1986, and an internationally acclaimed laser facility.
Activities at RAL are broken down into 6 main Departments: Administrative, Central Computing, Informatics, Particle Physics, Science, and Space Science. The first two departments provide support for RAL' s activities while the last four are responsible for a particular Board's activity at RAL. Informatics Department is responsible for the Information Technology and Infrastructure facilities provided by the Engineering Board. RAL's Deputy Director is responsible for externally funded projects and the Technology Department which provides a technical support facility for the laboratory.
The Engineering Board's activities in the Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) and Circuit Design areas are supported by the Technology Department.
The structure of Informatics Department has changed over the years, to meet changing requirements. The version overleaf came into force in June 1990.
The Science and Engineering Research Council's (SERC's) Engineering Board's activities cover the whole spectrum of research having the potential for long-term application to industry. A major part of this activity is Information Engineering (covering both computing and communications research) and how it can be applied within engineering. The Board has been particularly keen on providing Specially Promoted Programmes (SPPs) in areas which it sees as important and has emphasised the need for academic-industrial collaboration. This lead to the development of a number of Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)/SERC jointly funded ventures including the Joint Framework for Information Technology (JFIT), the successor to the Alvey Initiative, and the Engineering Applications of Transputers Initiative.
Informatics Department has been involved with all these programmes in its role of supporting the Engineering Board's activities in the Information Technology area. A separate Department at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), Technology, also provides support for the Engineering Board programme but this is primarily in the Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) area. Informatics Department tends to concentrate on assessment, research and development of software and assessment of hardware.
In July 1984, the Computing Division at RAL was split into two separate Divisions, mainly due to its increasing size which reflected the key role of computing in all scientific research. The new Central Computing Division retained responsibility for the mainframe computing service and also wide area networking. Those functions supporting the Engineering Board's programme were taken over by the new Informatics Division. Professor Hopgood, who ran the old Computing Division, took responsibility for the new Informatics Division, while Dr Davies joined RAL from SERC's Daresbury Laboratory to take over the running of the new Central Computing Division.
At the time of the split, the main functions supported by Informatics Division were:
Many years earlier, the Engineering Board had set up an Interactive Computing Facility (ICF) to support university research in engineering departments. Initially based on DEC10 computers, it had gradually installed a network of GEC and Prime multi-user interactive systems across the country. At the time of the split, the ICF programme was being phased out.
The Single User System (SUS) programme grew out of the ICF and the SPP in Distributed Computing Systems. The aim of the SUS programme was to provide an integrated environment of high powered single user systems for researchers. Initially based on the ICL Perq, it had also begun to use SUN2 equipment at the time of the split.
RAL had provided support for the Engineering Board's Distributed Computing Systems' SPP and later supported a new initiative in Software Technology. It was also involved in the proposal to start a new SPP in Intelligent Knowledge Based Systems (IKBS). Consequently, when the Alvey programme started, RAL was asked to provide support for the Software Engineering and IKBS activities of the programme and, later, the Man Machine Interface programme as well.
Informatics Division became a Department in September 1987 after a Laboratory reorganisation which rationalised the overall structure making Department Heads responsible for a specific part of RAL's programme, both in project and manpower terms. About this time, work on Engineering Board supported applications software, and image processing associated with the Alvey Programme was moved into the new Department.
The current activities of the Department have evolved out of the history outlined above, and will continue to evolve. The structure of the department is defined in terms of function rather than funding. Hopefully, this avoids changes in structure caused by changes in funding. The Department has four Divisions:
A separate Information Sheet gives the current organogram of staff in post. The Divisions are approximately equal in size. Funding comes from the Engineering Board's Computing Facilities Committee (CFC), DTI/SERC JFIT Programme and the European Commission's ESPRIT Programme (European Special Programme for Research in Information Technology) plus a number of smaller funded projects. All Divisions provide an input to the Engineering Applications Support Environment (EASE) programme. EASE, which is funded by CFC and aims to provide for Engineering Board and academic JFIT research grant holders an effective computing environment and to increase the level of knowledge and awareness of modern computing techniques available among such researchers.
Much of modern computer aided engineering is concerned with design. Such work is often interactive, relevant to a specific discipline, and relies on the trial and error exploration of alternatives by using existing knowledge, past experience and heuristic methods to home in on an acceptable solution. This Division is concerned with the user interface to systems, the design process and the integration of components into a complete design suite.
One aspect of the design process is concerned with setting up models of real world objects and simulating how they behave. The emphasis in this Division is on the development of new techniques for modelling engineering systems, providing libraries of useful software etc. Specific concerns are the use of parallel processing to improve performance and visualisation techniques to present results of multi-dimensional data.
The major thrust of this Division is software and knowledge engineering, both in terms of developing new methodologies and tools for the construction of systems, and in applying these methodologies and tools in the context of real systems for real users. Construction of real applications and their critical evaluation are vital for later development and assessment of new methods and tools.
This Division provides technical support to those researchers funded by the Engineering Board in universities and polytechnics and also to the other Divisions in the Department. Some development work is carried out both inside the Division and elsewhere and then incorporated into the infrastructure to keep it up-to-date.
The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) believes that it has a responsibility to train its employees so that they have the correct skills for their current tasks and the skills necessary for their development in order to reach their full potential. The types of training fall into four major classes although the boundaries between them can be imprecise:
There are three main areas:
Introductory training is currently under review. When in place it will include a series of introductory seminars and induction courses. The induction courses will be site based and will be tailored to both the needs of the new recruit and his/her work at a particular establishment. A Laboratory training document is in course of preparation.
Technical training in computing is normally provided using external services. We frequently send people on manufacturer-specific courses for specific knowledge of particular operating systems, compilers, etc. In the UNIX area, the tendency is to make use of the specialist companies in the field. Normally, the courses are off-site, although, when the demand is there, the companies can be persuaded to mount specific courses at RAL. Staff are encouraged to attend relevant Conferences and Tutorials both in the UK and abroad. The aim is for all employees in the computing area to attend at least one external course a year to aid their professional development. Both within Informatics Department and RAL, lectures are given to ensure that the employee is aware of her/his responsibilities. For example, all new recruits must take a Safety Course to ensure that they can use fire-fighting equipment and know the relevant emergency procedures for evacuating buildings and so on.
For staff entering managerial or supervisory posts, there are a set of management courses that aim to widen the individual's understanding of her/his role. SERC has its own training section which either sets up the courses or organises SERC's participation. Specific courses exist for topics such as report writing and interviewing. The large involvement outside the UK means that a knowledge of foreign languages can be an advantage. As a result, language courses are available during the day in French and German. It is also possible for employees to get the fees paid for appropriate evening courses in relevant languages.
Two Groups in the Distributed Computing Services Division are taking part in a Pilot Study to see how suitable the Professional Development Scheme of the British Computer Society (BCS) is for SERC's IT staff. The job of each participant scheme is matched against a model of the whole IT industry. When the best match is found this indicates the kind of education, training and general development which is appropriate for that person. A plan of activities is then prepared for the individual based on the general guidelines and at the end of the cycle is signed as being completed. The result is a validated record of the development of the individual's career, which may lead to membership of BCS, Chartered Engineer status and so on. Three other Groups within SERC are also taking part in the Pilot, along with a dozen or so Civil Service Departments.
External training is aimed at formal education activities considered by management as necessary to make an individual more efficient in his present or potential duties. Thus it is usual that such training is relevant to current duties although more general courses are not ruled out al together.
Non-graduates entrants are encouraged to gain appropriate HNC qualifications at local colleges. Graduates recruits with degrees in non-computing subjects but with some computing background may be given the opportunity to attend day-release MSc courses in Computer Science (Brunel, Imperial and elsewhere) to enhance their existing computing background. It is possible for graduates to register for a PhD at a university. In this case, RAL cannot guarantee that the employee continues to work on topics relevant to her/his PhD. Also, the work directly specific to the PhD must be completed in her/his own time and probably at some cost to herself/himself. On the positive side, such students arc allowed to make use of in-house work where appropriate.
Less frequently, an employee may be allowed to undertake a full time course at a university as part of her/his official duty. Such students are expected to return to RAL during the long vacation to work and are required to sign an undertaking to return to SERC after the course. Open University courses may be undertaken where appropriate.
The difference between Further Education and External Training is that the initiative for further education is the employee's and the course should be attended largely or wholly in the employee's own time. In the case of further education, the relevance to the student's current job can be quite tenuous. Approval would normally be given on the basis of assisting in the development of the employee as an individual. Activities in this area range from Open University degrees to Outward Bound classes. Such classes often require attendance at summer schools and other meetings. The RAL looks sympathetically at such periods away from the Laboratory and, in certain cases, can allow part of the cost and time away to be counted as official business.
In line with Universities, leave for periods normally up to one year may be granted for study and travel away from the Laboratory. Study Leave is usually granted to allow an employee to acquire new ideas and knowledge of direct benefit to RAL. Sabbatical Leave, on the other hand, is to help employees of high promise to develop their potential to the full by giving an opportunity at a suitable stage in their career to broaden their experience or be refreshed by a change of working environment. It is unlikely that an employee would get more than one sabbatical leave during his career.
This overall awareness is backed-up at RAL by a variety of Lecture Series of both general scientific and specific discipline interest. In computing, there is a Laboratory-wide Seminar series and a more specific Informatics set. One advantage of being close to Oxford is the ability to attend appropriate Seminar Series there, which are normally scheduled for late afternoon to allow external participation.
RAL has a Training Advisory Panel which acts as a focus for training issues. It ensures that staff get suitable training and monitors courses run by SERC. Each Department has a Training Officer who sits on the Advisory Panel.
You have been asked to come to the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) for an interview, so you may be wondering what form this will take. The decision about whether to offer you employment will be made after a formal Civil Service style of interview. This note explains the objectives and structure of this interview, in the hope that the knowledge will help to put you at ease and enable you and the interview panel to obtain a better view of each other.
We want to get to know you, what you can do, what you know and what sort of person you are. This will enable us to decide how and where you would fit into our organisation. You will be able to gain an impression of RAL, to learn about the kind of work which is available and about the facilities which we provide.
After you have received an invitation to a formal interview, and before that interview takes place, we would like to encourage informal contacts between us. You are welcome to visit RAL, and we will be able to reimburse you for the cost of travel and accommodation provided you get our prior agreement. You should have received a copy of information material on Informatics Department - please let us know if this has not been supplied.
The interview panel usually consists of three or four members, one of whom will act as Chairman. There may be a representative from RAL Personnel Section. If you are being interviewed for a permanent post, there will be a representative from the Civil Service Commission; the presence of this member is to ensure uniformity of standard across the Civil Service and the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC), and will allow you to move to other government departments or bodies within the Civil Service without requiring another formal interview of this type. There will be no Civil Service representative if the interview is for a fixed term post. We need also to ensure consistency between new employees and existing members of staff in the same grade, and there may be a representative from the appropriate SERC review committee present for that purpose.
Usually two of the members will be closely associated with the post for which you are being interviewed. Although the panel will be sitting on one side of a table, and you on the other, this is solely for convenience. Don't worry if you feel nervous - it's quite natural. The panel members are able to recognise nervousness and will make allowances for it. They will not try "to catch you out"; their intention will be to encourage you to tell enough about yourself to enable them to judge your suitability for the job.
At the start of the interview, what you have written on the application form together, perhaps, with referee's reports, will be the only information which the panel has about you.
The interview follows a pattern. The Chairman will introduce the members to you, and either ask you to give a summary lasting 5 to 10 minutes, or take you through your application form questioning you about your career to date. In addition to familiarising the panel with your history, this part of the interview is intended to give you a chance to get used to the "atmosphere" - and, hopefully, to enable you to relax. You should come prepared to describe your career, pointing out what you consider to be relevant to the post on offer. If you are asked to give a summary, it should be a description of your background and what you have been doing in present and previous employment, or during your academic training if you have just left university or college. What you say may be used as a basis for subsequent questioning, so don't throw things in which are intended to impress unless you are prepared to expand on them later!
Then each panel member in turn will question you, finishing with the Chairman, who will then invite you to ask questions of the panel. The whole interview usually lasts about 45 minutes, so you will be questioned for about 30-35 minutes. You are at liberty to bring "exhibits", for example: photographs, drawings, sketches and listings. These should relate to work in which you have played an important part. You may use the blackboard, or pencil and paper, to assist your explanation.
The major part of the interview will be devoted to detailed technical questioning by the panel members. Some of the questions may relate to the work which you have described, but others may be outside this work.
The panel will also be interested in how wide your knowledge is, so you may be asked questions to which you don't know the answers; don't get flummoxed - there are limits to every person's knowledge. It is worthwhile preparing by doing some revision well before the interview.
If you don't catch a question, or you are not clear what the questioner wants, ask for clarification. Never attempt to answer what you think the question might have been if you are not sure. When answering questions, don't wander. However, DO expand. Don't just say what you did, say WHY you did it, HOW you did it and WHAT the outcome was.
The panel will be interested not only in your suitability for the post, but in your potential for future development and promotion. They will be interested not only in your technical skills but also in your ability to communicate and work with others, and your organisational and management skills (though possibly latent) will also be of concern.
If you have any questions or doubts about the job, RAL or about the SERC, please ask when the Chairman invites you towards the end of the interview. We want you to go away feeling that you know something about us, as well as being satisfied that you have told us enough about you. If you feel that the panel has missed something of importance, or may have misunderstood something, take this opportunity to mention it. If you have questions relating to conditions of employment these can be answered by Personnel Section or their representative on the interview panel.
You may be given the opportunity to visit the area in which you will be working if you join us, and you should be able to talk to people there. This visit will have no effect on any decision about your suitability for the post; this decision is taken by the interview panel. As mentioned above, you can also visit the Laboratory before the interview.
Normally you will be advised either by the Chairman of the interview panel or by an informal letter within a week if an offer is to be made. A formal letter will then follow later. If you are in doubt about whether to accept, please do not hesitate to contact us for further information or discussion, or to arrange a further visit to the Laboratory to talk to us about the post and the work which you would be doing.
The name EASE is used to denote the Computing Policy of the Engineering Board of the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC). It may also be described as the collection of events and actions brought about by the operation of the policy i.e. the EASE Programme
Formally the definition of EASE consists of two parts:
These services and updates of the schedules are carried out in consultation with the Community and the Subject Committees.
The strategy for EASE takes due account of the priority areas defined in the SERC's Corporate Plan which are appropriate to CFC, namely:
The Engineering Board's research community tends to be split along Subject Committee lines which do not relate directly to computing solutions
EASE's Mission Statement for the community to associate with is:
To stimulate and encourage engineers to use appropriate state-of-the-art software and hardware to enhance their research.
CFC has decided to adopt an active, rather than passive, role to facilitate cross-fertilisation between committees, disciplines and Industry in the computing area (i.e. to improve communications between people)
The following major areas have been identified:
The major planks for the current programme of work are:
Some special features of the workplan include:
In summary, EASE concentrates on giving researchers choice and provides the information and guidance necessary to make the right choice for their research needs.
Transputers are members of a family of revolutionary microprocessors designed and manufactured in Bristol by Inmos, now a part of the SGS- Thomson Microelectronics Group, a Dutch-based Franco/Italian company.
Transputers can provide computers and embedded systems with a price-to-performance ratio far greater than any currently existing chip. This is because Transputers are unique in being able to be directly linked together, without the need for any additional hardware or software. Transputers so linked, can work concurrently and independently of one another; a large problem can be solved more quickly on a network of Transputers because each Transputer in the network can work on a portion of the problem whilst its neighbour(s) works on another.
This technique - Parallel Processing - is known to be very powerful but, prior to the advent of the Transputer, this was only available on the most expensive computers - the Supercomputers - whilst the low cost Transputer has allowed it to be utilised for a fraction of its former cost.
All Transputers have on-chip communication links and on-chip memory both features unique to Transputers. Typically they are 32 bit devices with 4 communication links and 4K of memory. The T800 model also has a 64-bit floating point unit. For embedded systems, a 2 link version with 2K of memory is available in 16 bit architecture. Military specification versions are now becoming available whilst a fourth type of Transputer dedicated to Digital Signal Processing-type applications has commenced shipping.
They are usually supplied using the board/motherboard approach, application specific facilities often being incorporated on the boards.
The Transputer runs under the OCCAM language but a variety of cross-compilers are now available including Fortran, C, Modula 2 and Pascal. General purpose operating systems, development environments and debuggers are also now available.
Several over-the-counter type packages can be bought; these are often existing scientific or engineering packages that have been ported to the Transputer.
Packages covering Graphics (including X Windows), Statistics, Finite Elements Analysis and Computational Fluid Dynamics are also available.
Library software for Maths, Graphics and Image Processing is also commercially available.
Many companies have developed software for in-house applications whilst many non-commercial programs have also been built.
The potential, in terms of both commercial reward and benefit to science and engineering that lies in the development of Transputer Application Software, is seen as immense.
The Transputer can be used as the controller in embedded systems. It is also used to provide add-on performance for a wide variety of machines from PCs to minicomputers. In standalone situations it can provide super-computer performance at a fraction of a supercomputers cost.
A Working Party set up in 1986 to investigate the potential of applying the Transputer to engineering/science applications, identified the existence of a clear window-of-opportunity of immense value both to Industry and Academia. On their recommendation, the Science and Engineering Research Council/Department of Trade and Industry (SERC/DTI) Initiative in the Engineering Applications of Transputers (The Transputer Initiative) was set up in April 1987 with a £2.5m budget for the period to March 1991; this has now been extended to March 1992 and the budget increased to £2.9m.
The Initiative is based in the Informatics Department at the SERC's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) and is headed by a coordination team under the direction of a National Coordinator.
A large loan pool of Transputer hardware and software has been established for academic use; to date over 160 groups have used this facility.
Six Regional Transputer Support Centres have been set up to meet the needs of Industry by providing a range of services from introductory courses through use of equipment to contract development work.
The National Transputer Software Exchange Library has been established; copies of software placed in the library can be obtained, depending on status, for a nominal charge.
17 Contracts have been placed for the development of Software vital to the development of Applications Software or for surveys of areas of direct interest e.g. Parallel Compilers.
A monthly magazine - The Mailshot- is produced that spans the range between "trade magazine" and "academic journal" and which has a worldwide circulation of 3000.
Three Transputer Applications Community Clubs have been established to promote developments in three areas of immense potential (Image Processing, Molecular Modelling and Real-Time Control).
A regular series of seminars and workshops to inform existing Transputer users and potential users of the latest developments and allow users to provide feedback to developers.
Strong links have been forged with a broad range of Transputer product companies. Several have entered into sponsorship arrangements with the Initiative and/or its Centres; the value of these sponsorships currently exceeds £0.9m.
Links have been established with several European groups and others outside of Europe.
The Initiative sponsored 1st International Conference on Applications of the Transputer together with the largest exhibition of Transputer products to date, was held in Liverpool in August 1989.
The 2nd International Conference (TA90) was held in July 1990 in Southampton (UK); TA91 will be held in Glasgow, 28-30 August 1991 and TA92 in Barcelona, Spain, 21-25 September 1992.
With the creation of a single European Market In 1992, the Initiative will shortly be increasing its European activities in preparation.
