This is the fourth edition of the Newsletter produced under the new management and comments are beginning to flow forth. It's gratifying to know that it is becoming part of the communications of EASE. Reaction is always welcome - do you find it useful, interesting and informative - does it go some way to meeting your IT requirements - what else would you like included? It's your Newsletter - please help shape it to suit you.
This month your attention is drawn to the special offers - the invitations to bid for various contracts etc. These are in line with the new policy of the Computing Facilities Committee in allowing open tender for the provision and distribution of services and facilities. Make the most of the opportunity!
The Computing Facilities Technical Advisory Group (CFTAG) has decided that as part of the Education and Awareness Programme a comprehensive survey of the potential community having access to EASE should be undertaken. In addition to establishing personal contact between the Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) and members of the Informatics Department at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, the main objectives of the visits are:
Some preliminary visits have already been undertaken but it is hoped to complete this activity before the end of the year.
Initial contact will be made with the already nominated EASE HEI contact. It is hoped to have discussions with a representative cross section of the faculty or department at each HEI. However anyone who feels that they have particular information or interests which should be addressed is invited to make these known prior to the visits by contacting any member of the ECFE at RAL or me personally.
The Engineering Computing Facilities (ECF) Prime User Service Computer, RLPA, located at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory will finally cease operation on 31 March 1990.
Users will be aware that effective service on this system is already being progressively withdrawn and remaining users are encouraged to have ended their effective use of this facility by the end of December 1989. All users with IDs have already been contacted to remind them of the closure, but in the event of anyone making use of this machine, not having been contacted and the closure presents special problems, are invited to make this known to Mrs Pat Athawes immediately.
The Computing Facilities Committee (CFC) has funds available during the current financial year 1989190 to purchase additional Central File Servers. These are intended for departmental use in Higher Educational Institutes (HEIs) where there is significant current or potential for SERC workstation grant funded activity. This invitation to submit notice of interest in bidding for one of these servers is the first stage of a placement process.
Bids should not exceed two sides of A4 and should include brief details of the Engineering Department's bidding, existing and planned (EB) grants, existing workstations provided on grants, and from other sources any servers already operating, local networking facilities and some estimate of the size of the community to be supported.
These preliminary bids will be considered by the Computing Facilities Technical Advisory Group at its meeting early in September, where a short list will be selected and these will be invited to enter into some detailed discussion such that a final decision as to the final placement decisions can be made.
If you require any assistance in formulating a bid or require any further information, please contact me.
The requirement for a general purpose user-driven archive/retrieval facility for users of workstations has been identified. Prior to a specification of the exact details of what form this facility should take, bids are invited from anyone who would like to be involved in its provision.
It is anticipated that such a facility would be based upon some form of bulk storage, ie optical disk, attached to a central server facility with zero to minimal operator involvement.
If you feel you have the knowledge and experience to develop and support this type of facility, please contact me by the end of August with details of appropriate knowledge and experience, as it is hoped to make an early start on this project.
Under its Engineering Applications Support Environment (EASE) policy the Computing Facilities Committee (CFC) has decided to establish a number of Community Clubs. These Clubs will enable greater interaction between IT developers and the engineering research community in specific applications areas.
Initially three such Clubs will be set up. The first will be in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and will be a joint activity with the new CFD Initiative recently established by the Electromechanical Engineering Committee (EMEC). This Club will be launched as soon as EMEC has appointed a Coordinator for the CFD Initiative.
CFC agreed that the second Club should be in a specific Real Time area. The need for such a focus was identified at a number of CFC workshops held during the past 18 months.
To define the specific area of focus for this Club CFC decided to issue an invitation to the Community via the newsletter to bid for this activity. Ideally the bid should come from a group of people with a common interest in a Real Time area.
The topic for the third Club is open to bids and again should ideally be submitted by a group of people with a common interest.
Community Clubs will:
Each Club will be launched through an Open Meeting where the exact format for the Club will be agreed by the Community with interests in the specific area.
CFC has made funds available to support the activities of these three Community Clubs. Each Club will be responsible for making the appropriate cases to use these funds.
Preliminary bids should reach Geoff Lambert at RAL by 31 August, so that they can be considered by the Computing Facilities Technical Advisory Group at its meeting on 7 September 1989.
This programming technique is becoming increasingly popular; it has been extensively used in the area of user interface design in particular (eg in the Apple Macintosh user interface). It is, however, generally applicable to all areas of software development. Briefly:
Thus code generated using the object-oriented approach is:
A number of object-oriented programming systems (OOPS) are available, such as Smalltalk, C++, Eiffel, Objective-C, etc, on equipment as varied as PCs, workstations and mainframes.
As part of the EASE awareness programme, a free seminar has been organised for Monday 18 September 1989 at UMIST, where the principles of object-oriented systems will be presented, and experiences of applying object-oriented programming techniques to engineering problems related.
A User Interface Management System (UIMSs) assist the application programmer in the production of a well-designed user interface. A full UIMS should manage all the interaction with the user, controlling the communication between application(s) and the window manager / graphics system. Much of the code in a typical application is concerned with user interaction, and therefore use of a UIMS can increase programmer productivity. In addition the end-user is protected from raw application software.
Some features that might be expected from a UIMS are:
A number of current products are offered as UIMS: these range from systems approaching the functionality sought at the Seeheim Workshop (see Pfaff 1985 [1]) to toolkits. There are also other developments that are of interest, for example: use of 4GLs for developing applications; rapid prototyping using Hypertext systems; and the production of user interfaces using object-oriented systems such as Smalltalk. Although there is a potential role for user models there is no clear extension from many current UIMS to intelligent or adaptive systems.
UIMS are relatively new tools and as such research ideas are still being transformed into commercial products.
Three main activities have taken place in the UIMS area:
As a result of the assessment exercise CFTAG and CFC felt that it was premature to recommend a particular UIMS system at this time. However, it was thought useful to continue the tracking activity, and to widen it to include alternatives such as toolkits. Availability under X and the use of graphics standards is critical. It is also important, as with other EASE recommended products, that the appropriate level of support could be offered to programmers using such systems. Possible future activities include the provision of a state-of-the-art UIMS to trial sites to enable them to try out a UIMS in their application area.
A Seminar on UIMS will be held on Tuesday 19 September 1989 at UMIST. There is no charge for this event. This will have a number of functions:
[1] Pfaff, E. (1985) User Interface Management Systems. Springer-Verlag.
[2] CFTAG Report and Recommendations of Workshop on UIMS, Support for Database Systems, Numerical and Mathematical Software, Tools for Integration
[3] RAL Report User Interface Management Systems - A Current Product Review RAL-88-028 (no longer available but an up-dated version is available from Martin Prime).
[4] Internal CFT AG/CFC Report: not publicly available.
This report covers the second major evaluation exercise requested by CFTAG - the assessment of workstations using the Intel 80386 microprocessor and running under the Unix operating system. The exercise was planned in the same way as the previous one: the completion of a questionnaire by the supplier, meetings between supplier and RAL, and benchmarking a loaned machine at RAL.
[General information on the purpose of these exercises is to be found in Issue 10 of the Engineering Computing Newsletter dated Jan - Mar 1989].
In theory, all 80386 machines could run a version of Unix obtained directly from A T & T. However, it would be impossible to benchmark machines if it proved necessary to obtain the Operating System from somewhere else. It was therefore decided to approach only those suppliers who also provided Unix.
Almost 50 suppliers of 80386 machines were identified but, of these, less than 20 claimed to supply a form of Unix. A further reduction was made when only eight suppliers answered the questionnaire - to varying degrees of completeness - and only three were able to provide a machine with adequate software for benchmarking. These were SUN, with their own 386i, Trinitec, suppliers of a Wyse WY3216, and Conformix with an Intel SYP302. Conformix is a subsidiary of Trinitec and, consequently, both machines run the same software, supplied by Interactive Systems Corporation.
| SUN | Wyse | Intel | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Machine | 386i | WS3216 | SYP302 |
| MIPS | 5 | 3.18 | 5.52 |
| Clock(MHz) | 25 | 16 | 25 |
| Heat (Kw) | 0.38 | 0.31 | 0.22 |
| Noise (dB) | 45 | 45 | |
| Screen size | 1152 by 900 | 1280 by 1024 | 1280 by 1024 |
| Memory (Mb) | 8 | 4 | 4 |
| Disc (Mb) | 327 | 106 | 106 |
| Price Range | Medium | Low | Low |
The screen size, in pixels per inch, refers to either a 19 or 20 inch monitor.
The price ranges are those for the benchmarked machines but do not take any discounts into effect. They are based upon comparisons with machines of a similar configuration.
As before, all results are given relative to those obtained for a 4Mb SUN3/60, running SunOS4.0.1. The SUN 386i also used SunOS4.0.1 whereas the Wyse and Intel machines used Interactive's 386/ix Release 2.0. The key below refers to all the following tables -
Code Range of ratios to SUN 3/60 ++++ >3 +++ 2-3 ++ 1.5-2 + 1.2-1.5 Blank 0.9-1.2 - 0.7-0.9 -- 0.5-0.7 --- 0.3-0.5 ---- <0.3
The following table gives relative values for basic arithmetic operations, both integer and floating point, function calls, system calls and disc input/output (all called from C, the systems programming language).
| SUN | Wyse | Intel | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Integer | +++ | - | + |
| FPO | --- | - | |
| Funct Calls | +++ | ++ | |
| Sys Calls | ++++ | ++++ | |
| I/O | * | * | * |
The fast results for system calls on the Wyse and Intel machines reflect the difference between the versions of Unix, System V on Wyse and Intel, and BSD on SUN.
* The I/O figures were too variable to give a reliable code in the table.
The following table gives relative values for basic arithmetic operations, both integer and floating point, and function calls from Fortran programs.
| SUN | Wyse | Intel | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Integer | +++ | -- | |
| FP | +++ | - | + |
| Funct Calls | ++ | - | + |
Pascal was not available on any of the machines.
The table gives relative values for applications in the following areas: computation - thermodynamic simulation (Fortran), image processing matrix transformation (Fortran), and IKBS natural language processing (prolog).
| SUN | Wyse | Intel | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Computation | ++ | + | +++ |
| Image Processing | ++ | ++ | |
| IKBS | + | ++ |
Interactive were not able to supply NFS for Wyse and Intel in time for benchmarking. In comparison with the SUN3/60, NFS on the 386i would be rated with a +.
All three machines supported GKS, at level 2C, but none supported GKS-3D. Only SUN supported PHIGS, having both Fortran and C bindings.
SUN provided a beta test version of X11.2 but this was not sufficiently stable to run the complete benchmark set. Interactive produced the Xl1.3 software but too late for analysis.
The table presented in this section is an attempt to summarise the general characteristics and performance of each machine. This has been done by assessing each characteristic for each machine on a scale of * (poor) to ***** (excellent). The assessments are non-competitive, and do not represent a ranking.
| Basic System | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| SUN | Wyse | Intel | |
| Hardware | *** | ** | **** |
| Software | ** | *** | *** |
| Communications | **** | *** | *** |
| Graphics | **** | **** | **** |
| X Windows | * | ** | ** |
| Languages | |||
| Standard | ** | ** | ** |
| Additional | ** | * | * |
| Applications | |||
| Availability | **** | ** | ** |
| Performance | |||
| Basic System | **** | ** | ** |
| Applications | **** | ** | **** |
Although a large number of 80386 suppliers run a version of Unix, it is apparent that most target those wishing to use desktop publishing and database software rather than compilers and engineering packages. MS-DOS is still considered the prime operating system in most cases. The suppliers, in general, are vendors of hardware and basic software only and refer the purchaser to software houses for other requirements.
With this background, the technique of using a questionnaire proved less effective than before, since the suppliers were able to provide much less information about their machines (they were not used to dealing with clients who required such detailed knowledge). In particular, there was little information on what applications were available on their hardware. This contrasts with the suppliers of the larger Workstations, who provide catalogues.
The overall conclusion is that there is insufficient reason at present to add 80386 based machines to the Approved list. This has been endorsed by CFTAG at its June meeting.
The advent of bit-mapped screens and reasonably cheap laser printers has awakened a dramatic increase in the interest in text formatting systems. From the engineering workers' point of view many of these are disappointing in that they offer a limited character set and little, if any, support for mathematics. There are several typesetting systems available which offer multiple fonts, a rich set of mathematical symbols and support for complex formulae. One of these is AT&T's Documenters' Workbench (DWB*): another is TEX.
The TEX typesetting system was developed by Donald Knuth. As well as the above features, there are additional tools for constructing indices, bibliographies, merging PostScript figures, producing overhead transparencies and checking the spelling of documents.
Because the package is in the public domain a number of EASE workers have taken up the package but found difficulty with support. Accordingly it has been decided to use some of the effort available on the existing contract at UMIST to provide a Support Centre for TEX. This will cover:
As an example of the TEX-nicians art here is a commutative diagram. This shows the range of fonts, font sizes, special symbols and layout capabilities of the package.
The visitor scheme operating under the support project allows research staff and students who already hold or who are working on grants provided through the SERC Engineering Board to visit AIAI to use specialist hardware and software systems.
Mr Sean Greenhow from the Department of Control Engineering, Sheffield University, spent a week here in May to learn Knowledge Craft and to investigate alternative inference strategies of an existing expert system shell, called RESAC (Real Time Expert System for Advice and Control), that he had designed and implemented. A project report is forthcoming.
AIAI now has over thirty visitor reports. These reports are available at a nominal cost to cover the photocopying and postage. A list of all the titles in our project report series is available on request.
There will be a one day Technology Tutorial on 1st November at AIAI in Edinburgh to explore the issues concerned with Qualitative Reasoning. Qualitative Reasoning primarily involves predicting the behaviour of a physical system using only non-numeric values, but preserving all important behavioural distinctions, starting from a structural description of the system.
Dr Brian Drabble, a member of the Knowledge Based Planning group at AIAI, will describe how a qualitative model can be used in situations where the information is inherently non-numeric, imprecise or incomplete. He will look at the methodologies involved and describe some current uses of this type of reasoning in engineering.
Our short courses for the fourth quarter of 1989 are:
We have received a good response (53 replies) to our request for information for compiling a directory of AI related engineering projects. If you are working on an engineering project which attempts to apply Artificial Intelligence techniques and you have not already replied to us, we would be most grateful if you could complete and return the enclosed form.
The resulting directory will be distributed widely so that the UK academic engineering community will be able to find out quickly what has been done or is being done.
The following is a sample synopsis taken from the replies received so far.
UCL has nearly 30 years of experience in the field of biochemical engineering. Since inception in the early 1960s UCL has also pioneered the use of biological catalysts (biocatalysts) as a means of carrying out chemical reactions - a process known as biotransformation. Now this expertise has been consolidated in the form of an IKBS.
Aim of the system is to give the user guidelines for biotransformation process design. Initially the domain will focus on reactions involving poorly water-soluble organic compounds but will ultimately be extended to embrace other areas of biocatalyst technology. These guidelines will take the following form:
APPLICATION OF TRANSPUTERS CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION, University of Liverpool, 23-25 August 1989
This first International Conference will highlight advances in applications software, both in numerical applications (CFD, FE, Molecular Modelling, etc) and non-numerical applications (image processing, robotics; etc).
Accompanying the Conference will be the largest Exhibition so far of Transputer products with suppliers from the UK, Europe and the USA being present.
The Conference and Exhibition organised by the SERC/DTI Transputer Initiative is to be preceded by a half-day tutorial on Transputer Applications aimed at senior managers and researchers and designed to being out the likely future impact of Transputers.
SUN (UK) USERS GROUP CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION, Manchester, 7/8 September 1989
This 3rd annual Conference and Exhibition will take place at the Armitage Centre, Manchester on Thursday 7th and Friday 8th September 1989. The programme for the conference consists of technical presentations from Sun users and employees of Sun Microsystems, end-user application talks as well as less formal special interest group meetings. Network management, multi-processor Sun OS, auto-mounting, Data Protection and the REKURSIV board are some of the topics covered in the technical papers to be presented. Parallel architectures, connecting small computers to Suns, graphics, systems administration, Sun4/SPARC and Communications will be addressed in special interest groups.
OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING (OOP) & UIMS SEMINARS AT UMIST. Monday, Tuesday, 18, 19 September 1989
TRANSPUTER COURSES London & SE Regional Transputer Support Centre
EUROGRAPHICS CONFERENCE, EG89, Hamburg, 4-8 September 1989
The theme for this year's Conference IS Interaction, Integration and Visualisation.
The Conference starts with 2 days of tutorials on topics such as Visualisation of Scientific Data, Advance Topics in Solid Modelling, Distributed Window Systems, Object Oriented Graphics and Produce Data Exchange. There are parallel streams through the last 3 days of the Conference plus an Exhibition. Invited speakers include .Tim Foley, Gerald Murch and Don Greenberg from the USA.
COMPUTER INTEGRATED PROCESS ENGINEERING CONFERENCE (CIPE '89), Leeds, 25-28 September 1989
CIPE '89 will be the foremost event for process engineers involved in almost any aspect of software development and use ever to be held in the UK. Over 50 papers from Europe, USA and Japan are currently being refereed.
UK IT 1990 CONFERENCE, University of Southampton, 19-22 March 1990
The UK IT Conference is organised by the IEE in association with the BCS, DTI and SERC. The aim of the Conference is to provide an annual, national, technical forum for the presentation of current work in the enabling techniques [or information processing; ie to cover the middle ground between specific application areas on the one hand and basic research on the other.
PEVE Unit Short Course Schedule - Summer 1989
PEVE - Post Experience Vocation Education in Information Technology
For further information, please Martyn Spink at PEVE Unit, University of Manchester.
Queen Mary College, London has transferred to an AMT DAP 610 system the specialist parallel computer service that it operates for the UK academic research community. Along with its DEC VAX. 8350 host system, the new DAP has replaced the ICL 2980.
The DAP Group was formed during the Summer of 1986, to provide a forum for discussion of topics of interest to DAP owners, DAP users and all others interested in DAP-like parallel architectures and to act as a focus for related activities.
The DAP Group holds one-day open meetings every six months on wide ranging DAP hardware, software and general applications. As well as formal sessions, these open meetings provide an ideal forum for informal discussions.
