The lion's share of this issue lS devoted to the EASE Workstation Assessment report in concise form. A full version is available on request from the author. Activities associated with the Transputer Applications Community Club are starting - your attention is drawn to the separate insert on this subject. Also, please note the seminar, Software Maintainability - How to Avoid Reinventing Wheels, on Thursday 9 November at RAL - it's not too late to apply to attend this free event (details at the back page under Forthcoming Events).
The Computing Facilities Committee has recognised the growing importance of Quality Assurance Software and particularly the need to provide relevant tools within the Engineering Applications Support Environment. The ability to quality assure software produced by the engineering research community will provide a number of benefits. In particular the opportunities for the take-up of such software by Industry will be greatly enhanced.
Bids are invited for an EMR contract to carry out a critical survey of existing Quality Assurance Software and Tools, and to make recommendations on which are suitable for use by the engineering research community. The contract offered will be for a maximum period of six months and fund one person full-time for this period, starting on or before 1 February 1990.
Bids should be sent to me at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory to reach me no later than 21 November 1989. Applicants must summarise their relevant experience in the Quality Assurance area in their proposals. Bids will be considered by the Computing Facilities Technical Advisory Group on 5 December 1989 and the Computing Facilities Committee will decide on 14 December 1989 who should be offered the contract.
Education and Awareness forms an important and significant part of the Computing Facilities Committee's (CFC's) Engineering Applications Support Environment (EASE) programme. Bids are invited for a three-year contract to support the EASE Education and Awareness programme. The contract will start on 1 December 1990 and will provide support for two man years per year.
The work to be undertaken will include:
Applicants must demonstrate relevant experience in the areas of support, liaison and catering for awareness needs. Applications, detailing the quality and background of staff who will be involved and full cost estimates, including overheads, should be sent to me at RAL by 21 November 1989 for consideration by the Computing Facilities Technical Advisory Group on 5 December. CFC will decide on 14 December 1989 who should be offered the contract.
The first evaluation undertaken for the Computing Facilities Technical Advisory Group (CFT G) was reported in Issue 10 of the Engineering Computing Newsletter dated Jan-Mar 1989. This report covers a repeat of that exercise, looking at Workstations similar to the SUN 3 class of single user systems running a version of the Unix1 Operating System. As before, machines based on the Intel 80386 chip and the more powerful graphics workstations have been excluded (the 80386-based machines formed the subject of the assessment reported in Issue 13, July 1989). 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.
In the intervening 12 months, there have been a considerable number of changes in the marketplace, with many more machines appearing.
The base machine f0r comparison was the SUN 3/60, but the amount of memory has been increased to 8 Mb to cater for the requirements of the current version of the Operating System (OS4.0). In all the tables, the results for the base machine are supplied first, followed by the others in alphabetical order of supplier.
Benchmark figures have again been presented as Which Report style tables, normalised to the corresponding result for a SUN 3/60. (NB. The meanings of some of the symbols used in these tables has changed from the previous report, to take account of the increased performance of some models.) The key below refers to all the following tables.
| Code | Range of ratios to SUN3/60 |
|---|---|
| Blank | 0.9-1.2 |
| + | 1.2-1.5 |
| ++ | 1.5-2.5 |
| +++ | 2.5-4.0 |
| ++++ | 4.0-6.0 |
| +++++ | >6 |
| - | 0.7-0.9 |
| -- | 0.5-0.7 |
| --- | 0.3-0.5 |
| ---- | <0.3 |
| * | No meaningful result |
All the previous suppliers were contacted, as well as a number of new ones. Those who responded are listed below. Apple, CMC, HLH, Intergraph and NCR declined the invitation. The Sony machine was supplied by Logitek. Apollo and IBM expressed an interest, but did not have a suitable new model to test. In these two cases, updated information has been obtained where possible and fresh benchmark figures have been obtained where necessary by making use of machines already present at RAL. The price brackets range from <£6K (A) to >£20K (E).
| Supplier | Model | Operating System |
Memory (Mb) |
Monitor (ins) |
Price Bracket |
Machine Tested |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SUN | 3/60 | SunOS 4.0.3 | 8 | 19M | 141 | C |
| Acorn | R140 | RISCiX 1.01 | 4 | 14C | 3×60 | A |
| Apollo | DN3500 | Domain/OS 10.1 | 16 | 19M | 348 | D |
| DEC | DECstation 3100 | Ultrix 2.0.7 | 16 | 15M | 300 | C |
| DEC | VAXstation 3100 | Ultrix 2.0.7 | 8 | 19C | 2×100 | C |
| Data General | AViiON/300 | DG/UX 4.10 | 8 | 20M | 322 | C |
| HP | 9000/340C+ | HP-UX 6.5 | 8 | 16C | 304 | D |
| IBM | 6150/125 | AIX 2.2.1 | 8 | 19C | 180 | C |
| Lynwood | Open 30/100 | LynX 1.4 Beta | 4 | 14M | 170 | A |
| Mistral | Hitech-10 | UMIPS 1.31 | 8 | 20C | 300 | D |
| Silicon | Iris 4D/20 | SV.3+3.1D | 16 | 19C | 380 | D |
| Sony | NWS1850 | NEWS-OS 3.2 | 16 | 17C | 286 | E |
| SUN | 3/80 | SunOS 4.0.3 Beta | 8 | 17M | 104 | B |
| SUN | SPARCstation1 | SunOS 4.0.3 | 8 | 16C | 2×104 | C |
| Tektronix | 4319 | UTek 4 | 4 | 16C | 156 | C |
The prices used are for the configurations of the benchmark machines, and do not include any form of discount. All provided C, Fortran and NFS. Lynwood supplied a pre-production machine without floating point hardware. Acorn cannot be upgraded above 4Mb.
In the table below the Acorn heat output figure does not include either discs or monitor. The Silicon Graphics is a desk-side machine whereas all the others are desk-top.
| Machine | I/O Bus |
Screen pixels |
Noise dB |
Heat Kw |
CPU |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SUN3/60 | None | 1152 | 45 | 0.8 | M68020 |
| Acorn | SCSI | 1152 | <0.1 | ARM(risc) | |
| Apollo | PC | 1280 | 55 | 0.5 | M68030 |
| DECstation | None | 1024 | <20 | <0.3 | Mips(risc) |
| VAXstation | None | 1024 | <20 | <0.3 | cVAX |
| Data General | VME | 1280 | 40 | M8800(risc) | |
| HP9000 | HPIB | 1280 | 0.1 | M68030 | |
| IBM6150 | PC | 1024 | 51 | <0.3 | MIBM(risc) |
| Lynwood | Proprietary | 896 | M68030 | ||
| Mistral | PC | 1280 | 0.2 | Mips(risc) | |
| Silicon | VME | 1280 | 45 | 0.4 | Mips(risc) |
| Sony | VME | 1280 | M68030 | ||
| SUN3/80 | SBUS | 1152 | <45 | 0.1 | M68020 |
| SPARCstation | SBUS | 1152 | 50 | SPARC(risc) | |
| Tektronix | Proprietary | 1280 | <50 | 0.2 | M68020 |
The table below gives relative values for basic arithmetic operations, function calls, system calls and disc I/O (all called from C). Both the Lynwood and the SUN 3180 FP figures are for software floating point.
| Supplier | Model | Integer | FP | Function Calls |
Sys Calls |
I/O |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acorn | R140 | * | * | ++++ | - | -- |
| Apollo | DN3500 | - | ++ | +++++ | ++ | + |
| DEC | DECstation 3100 | ++ | +++++ | +++++ | ++ | - |
| DEC | VAXstation 3100 | + | ++ | - | ||
| Data General | AViiON/300 | +++ | ++++ | +++++ | - | --- |
| HP | 9000/340C+ | - | - | - | ||
| IBM | 6150/125 | - | + | + | -- | --- |
| Lynwood | Open 30/100 | -- | ---- | ++ | -- | --- |
| Mistral | Hitech-10 | +++ | +++++ | +++++ | +++ | |
| Silicon | Iris 4D/20 | ++++ | ++++ | - | ||
| Sony | NWS1850 | + | +++ | - | + | |
| SUN | 3/80 | ---- | ++ | - | + | |
| SUN | SPARCstation1 | ++ | ++++ | +++++ | +++ | |
| Tektronix | 4319 | -- | --- | ++ | --- | - |
The Acorn compiler optimisation nullified the integer and floating point tests. Function call figures were affected by the low results for SUN 3/60. HP had a compiler written for the 68020 rather than the 68030.
Only Apollo, DEC, HP, IBM and Silicon Graphics can supply an Ada compiler (but there are some third party compilers for some other systems). The tables below give relative values for basic arithmetic operations, function calls, memory copy, and input/output from Fortran and Pascal programs. Once again, the Lynwood and the SUN 3/80 FP figures are for software floating point. VAXfortran was used on the VAXstation. Pascal was not available on Acorn and Lynwood.
| Supplier | Model | Integer | FP | Function Calls |
I/O |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acorn | R140 | + | + | +++ | ---- |
| Apollo | DN3500 | ++ | +++++ | + | |
| DEC | DECstation 3100 | ++ | +++++ | +++++ | ++ |
| DEC | VAXstation 3100 | +++ | - | - | |
| Data General | AViiON/300 | + | ++++ | +++++ | + |
| HP | 9000/340C+ | -- | + | - | - |
| IBM | 6150/125 | -- | ++ | --- | -- |
| Lynwood | Open 30/100 | --- | |||
| Mistral | Hitech-10 | ++ | +++++ | +++++ | ++ |
| Silicon | Iris 4D/20 | - | +++++ | +++ | ++ |
| Sony | NWS1850 | - | ++ | -- | |
| SUN | 3/80 | ---- | ++ | - | |
| SUN | SPARCstation1 | + | +++++ | +++++ | +++ |
| Tektronix | 4319 | --- | -- | + | ---- |
| Supplier | Model | Integer | FP | Function Calls |
I/O |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apollo | DN3500 | ++ | +++ | +++ | |
| DEC | DECstation 3100 | +++ | +++++ | +++++ | |
| DEC | VAXstation 3100 | ++ | +++ | ||
| Data General | AViiON/300 | ++++ | +++++ | +++++ | -- |
| HP | 9000/340C+ | - | + | +++ | |
| IBM | 6150/125 | --- | -- | --- | --- |
| Mistral | Hitech-10 | +++ | +++++ | +++++ | + |
| Silicon | Iris 4D/20 | + | +++++ | ++++ | |
| Sony | NWS1850 | + | ++ | ++++ | + |
| SUN | 3/80 | ---- | +++ | ||
| SUN | SPARCstation1 | ++ | +++++ | +++++ | + |
| Tektronix | 4319 | --- | ++ |
Only Apollo does not provide the Yellow Pages directory service used in the management of a NFS-based system. X25 wide area networking facilities are available on Acorn, Apollo, VAXstation, HP, SUN and Tektronix. The following table shows the relative performance of the NFS system for workstations acting as NFS clients to a 8Mb SUN 4/110 acting as server. The speed of the server will of course affect the results. The first set of tests measure various filestore activities within a given file system. The last test investigates performance when cross-filestore activities are performed.
| Supplier | Model | read | write | File Create |
remove | attributes | Cross filestore |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acorn | R140 | ---- | + | * | -- | ||
| Apollo | DN3500 | ---- | ---- | ---- | ---- | * | |
| DEC | DECstation 3100 | * | - | ||||
| DEC | VAXstation 3100 | - | * | -- | - | ||
| Data General | AViiON/300 | - | + | - | -- | * | |
| HP | 9000/340C+ | - | + | * | * | ||
| IBM | 6150/125 | - | --- | * | |||
| Lynwood | Open 30/100 | ---- | ---- | - | - | * | |
| Mistral | Hitech-10 | + | ++ | - | |||
| Silicon | Iris 4D/20 | - | + | - | * | ||
| Sony | NWS1850 | * | * | ||||
| SUN | 3/80 | ||||||
| SUN | SPARCstation1 | + | + | ||||
| Tektronix | 4319 | - | - |
All except Data General and Lynwood provide GKS with Fortran binding. Acorn, Apollo, HP and Mistral are at level 2B; the rest are at level 2C. Acorn, DEC, Mistral, SUN and' Tektronix also provide C binding.
Only IBM can provide GKS-3D currently.
Apollo, DEC, HP, IBM, Silicon Graphics, SUN and Tektronix provide PHIGS. Apollo, IBM and Tektronix supply Fortran binding: the others, C binding.
PHIGS+ is supported by DEC, HP and SUN.
Neither SUN nor Silicon Graphics supplied a version of X.11. A version is available on SUN, supported by Torch. The X11 run on the SUN 3/60 was obtained from MIT and has been optimised in-house. The following tables indicate the performance of the X-windows system in various operations (line, rectangle and character drawing; vertical and horizontal scrolling).
| Supplier | Model | Draw lines |
Draw rect |
Draw chars |
Vert scroll |
Horiz scroll |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acorn | R140 | --- | -- | -- | --- | -- |
| Apollo | DN3500 | - | - | -- | --- | - |
| DEC | DECstation 3100 | +++ | - | ++++ | ---- | ---- |
| DEC | VAXstation 3100 | -- | ++ | --- | ++ | - |
| Data General | AViiON/300 | ++++ | +++++ | +++ | ++++ | +++++ |
| HP | 9000/340C+ | -- | - | -- | ||
| IBM | 6150/125 | ++ | + | + | -- | |
| Lynwood | Open 30/100 | ---- | ---- | -- | --- | ---- |
| Mistral | Hitech-10 | +++ | * | + | - | -- |
| Sony | NWS1850 | ++ | ++ | ++ | ++ | |
| Tektronix | 4319 | ---- | -- | - | ---- |
The table gives relative values for the performance of real applications in the following selected areas:
The finite element program would not run on the Acorn. This time, the SUN 3/80 tests were run using the hardware FP. Lynwood was still using software FP.
| Supplier | Model | Computation | Finite element |
Image processing |
IKBS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acorn | R140 | -- | * | -- | -- |
| Apollo | DN3500 | + | - | ||
| DEC | DECstation 3100 | +++ | +++++ | +++++ | +++ |
| DEC | VAXstation 3100 | ++ | ++ | ++ | - |
| Data General | AViiON/300 | ++++ | ++++ | +++ | +++ |
| HP | 9000/340C+ | - | -- | - | |
| IBM | 6150/125 | - | - | --- | - |
| Lynwood | Open 30/100 | ---- | ---- | ---- | -- |
| Mistral | Hitech-10 | +++ | ++++ | +++ | +++ |
| Silicon | Iris 4D/20 | ++ | ++++ | +++ | ++ |
| Sony | NWS1850 | + | + | ++ | |
| SUN | 3/80 | - | |||
| SUN | SPARCstation1 | +++ | ++++ | +++ | ++ |
| Tektronix | 4319 | ---- | --- | ---- | --- |
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). A- indicates an apparent lack of the feature. The assessments are non-competitive, and do not represent a ranking.
| Code | Title |
|---|---|
| 1 | Hardware |
| 2 | Software |
| 3 | Communications |
| 4 | Graphics |
| 5 | X-Windows |
| 6 | Standard languages |
| 7 | Additional Languages |
| 8 | Applications Available |
| 9 | Basic System Performance |
| 10 | Applications Performance |
| Machine | Basic System | Languages | Appl | Performance | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | |
| Sun/360 | *** | *** | **** | **** | ** | *** | **** | **** | *** | *** |
| Acorn | ** | ** | *** | *** | ** | *** | ** | ** | *** | ** |
| Apollo | **** | *** | * | *** | ** | **** | *** | ***** | *** | *** |
| DECstation 3100 | ***** | *** | **** | ***** | **** | ***** | *** | *** | ***** | ***** |
| VAXstation 3100 | *** | *** | *** | ***** | ** | **** | *** | **** | *** | **** |
| Data General | ***** | *** | *** | - | ***** | **** | - | - | **** | ***** |
| HP | **** | *** | *** | **** | ** | **** | * | **** | *** | *** |
| IBM | *** | *** | *** | **** | *** | **** | ** | *** | *** | *** |
| Lynwood | ** | ** | ** | - | * | ** | - | * | ** | * |
| Mistral | ***** | ** | **** | *** | **** | **** | * | ** | ***** | **** |
| Silicon | ***** | *** | *** | ** | - | ***** | * | ** | **** | **** |
| Sony | **** | *** | *** | * | **** | *** | ** | ** | *** | *** |
| 3/80 | **** | *** | **** | ***** | - | **** | ***** | ***** | ** | *** |
| SPARCstation1 | ***** | *** | ***** | ***** | - | ***** | ***** | **** | **** | **** |
| Tektronix | ** | *** | **** | **** | ** | *** | ** | ** | ** | ** |
Since the last assessment a year ago, there has been a considerable change in the workstation market. As well as the addition of a number of new suppliers (in particular, Data General), the power of workstations has increased. Most 68020 machines now have a 68030 upgrade, and there are a number of powerful RISC chips, in particular the one from Mips (which was used in three of the machines).
The X-Windows system is now generally available, and NFS has remained the de facto standard for distributed filestores. There is still some reluctance to provide ISO networking applications, but this is slowly changing. GKS benchmarks were prepared this time, but few suppliers provided the package, and those that did used US default settings which affected the results (the tests will be modified to allow for this in future). In general, it seems difficult to obtain higher level packages for assessment.
The original report was presented to CFTAG in September 1989. On the strength of all the evidence, recommendations were made to the Computing Facilities Committee (CFC) to add the SPARCstation and DECstation to the list of Approved machines. In addition to the SUN3, the current Approved list contains SUN4, VAXstation and IBM 6150.
CFTAG also recommended that the SUN 3/80 be added as soon as the floating point tests have been rerun satisfactorily.
CFTAG noted the performance of the Data General AViiON, Mistral Hitech-IO and Sony NWS 1850, and suggested that these would be candidates for Approval when more relevant applications software became available.
The ESPRIT II Project ARGOSI - Applications Related Graphics and OSI Standards Integration arises from the observation that graphics, communications and other standards are being developed in isolation. Two specific objectives of the project are:
ARGOSI is preparing a Workshop to be held in Athens. Contributions are sought which combine the latest results in communication services and computer graphics. Areas of interest include:
The Workshop language will be English.
Participation will be limited to encourage discussion. Selection will take place on the basis of full papers (up to 15 pages) reviewed by the Programme Committee. Papers and conclusions will appear in the workshop proceedings. Invitations to submit revised versions for a book (Eurographics Seminars series published by Springer-Verlag) will depend on the quality of the contributions.
Participation without submitting a paper may be possible in a few cases, if a position paper is submitted with your views on current issues In graphics and communications.
Notify Workshop secretary of intention to participate; please indicate whether you intend to submit a full or position paper when replying: 12 January 1990. Deadline for full papers/ position papers: 16 February 1990. Notification of participation/acceptance of paper; 4-6 April 1990.
The Workshop will be held at the Hotel Athenaum Intercontinental.
This article is the third in a series of four, the first two of which were published in Issues 14 (August) and Issue 15 (September).
Express is being developed to fulfill the data modelling needs of STEP (Standard for Exchange of Product Data), a major International Standards Organisation project to produce standard methods for exchange of engineering data. This article aims to give a brief overview of the language. For the purposes of STEP, there are four major requirements of a data modelling language:
The basic element of Express is the entity. The data associated with an entity is given as a set of attributes, and the behaviour of an entity is defined in terms of rules. A simple example of an entity definition is given below:
ENTITY automobile;
make :STRING;
serial_no :INTEGER;
engine_size :REAL;
colour :colourtype;
owner :person;
prev_owners :LIST[0:#] OF person;
UNIQUE
seriaL number;
WHERE
engine_size> 0.0;
END_ENTITY;
The entity automobile has six attributes. Each attribute has a type, the first three are simple base types, the next two are of types which will be defined elsewhere in the schema. The current owner is a person, which will be another entity type, and the previous owners are referenced by a (possibly empty) LIST of persons. The colour attribute is of type colourtype, which could be defined by the following statement:
TYPE colourtype = ENUMERATION OF
( red,
black,
blue,
white) ;
END_ TYPE;
This specifies that the colour attribute of a car may have any of a restricted set of values.
Constraints have been placed on the allowable values of two of the attributes: The serial_number must be different from any other in the file, and the engine_size must have a value greater than zero to be valid. These are local rules, which apply to the attributes of all instances of this entity in a file. It is also possible to specify global rules, which apply across entity instances. For example we may wish to specify that no person owns more than a maximum number of automobiles, or that a certain proportion of automobiles should be red. Global rules are most often described in terms of functions and procedures, which are specified much as they would be in a high-level programming language. The Express language includes some built-in functions, such as ABS, the trigonometric functions, and useful list functions, such as INSERT.
The structure of data in the engineering world often falls naturally into hierarchies. To capture this, Express uses a mechanism of SUPERTYPEs and SUBTYPEs, where a subtype is a kind or variety of the entity that is its supertype. Using the above example, we can say that an automobile is a subtype of another entity, road_vehicle, which includes the entities truck and bicycle. Here is how it would look in Express:
ENTITY road_vehicle SUPER TYPE OF
(truck, automobile, bicycle);
END_ENTITY;
We also have to change the declaration of automobile slightly to indicate that the supertype exists:
ENTITY automobile SUBTYPE OF
(road_vehicle);
We could also say that an automobile is a supertype of saloon cars, hatchbacks and estates, thus building a conceptual tree of information. When a supertype entity has attributes (not all will), those attributes are implied also to belong to the subtype entity. So all saloon_cars have a colour attribute, even though it will not be declared in the entity definition for saloon_car.
Thus the Express language offers a flexible and powerful method of modelling information in terms of entities and their relationship to each other. The STEP project has defined a mapping between Express and the physical file format. A compiler for Express has been developed at RAL, and this is being used to automate the mapping to the physical file - allowing another piece of RAL software, a physical file parser/checker, to get its knowledge of what is permitted to appear in the file directly from the Express schema.
The Computing Facilities Committee (CFC) is at the moment considering setting up a Community Club on Data Exchange and is inviting participation at an open meeting to be held at UMIST on 23 November. The aim of the Club would be to support Data Exchange in the academic engineering community. There are several reasons why data exchange is important to engineering researchers:
Below is a list of activities which are considered suitable for a CCDE:
The following is a proposal for a work programme for 1990, to be discussed at the open meeting. This should be seen as a suggestion only as participants at the open meeting (see below) will be encouraged to help define the work programme:
The next step in establishing the Community Club will be the organisation of an open meeting which anyone with an interest in data exchange is encouraged to attend. At this meeting the views of the community will be sought on the program described above, and also additional proposals for the work programme can be put forward. An active involvement of the community is seen as essential to the success of the club. This issue of the Newsletter contains, as a separate insert, a registration form for the meeting which will take place in Manchester (UMIST) on 23 November. As space is limited you are recommended to register as soon as possible.
The increasing power and storage of modem computers and workstations has extended the range of problems that can now be tackled. Simulations which might have been restricted to 2D in the past can now be run in 3D and for multiple timesteps. While short sequences may be viewable on powerful workstations, long and/or large sequences can now be most easily viewed on videotape. An SERC facility for direct output to videotape has been developed at the Atlas Centre and has been producing some interesting results.
The system was designed late in 1987 and the equipment delivered in the first quarter of 1988.
There are three main components:
The computer chosen was a Topaz system from Primagraphics. This runs Unix System V and is extensively used in broadcast television studios for animation. It contains two TV frame stores and a large amount of off-screen memory in which pictures can be assembled.
The video recorder is a Sony VO-5850 recorder (PAL format). This uses U-matic tapes and has been enhanced to handle standard (Lo-band) and high quality (Hi-band SP) tapes, recording in either format. A VHS recorder is also connected, so that VHS copies can be made from the U-matic masters.
The animation controller is a Lyon-Lamb MiniVAS, configured to drive the Sony recorder. In fact a number of other components (synchronous pulse generator, PAL encoder and waveform monitors) are essential and are included in the system, but do not affect the facility as seen by users.
Early in the project it was decided to make every effort to support a single format of file and the format chosen was the Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM, ISO standard 8632). The CGM format has proved very transportable, very compact and very suitable in all ways.
A single program drives the video system. It performs two basic tasks:
The program has a large number of options, including the position on the videotape to insert the pictures and the number of video frames to record for each CGM picture. Additionally, sequences of CGM pictures can be repeated along the videotape, which is useful if the sequence is cyclic and needs to be viewed several times.
In the near future, it will be possible to include these instructions to the video system as part of the CGM file; the CGM specification allows ESCAPE elements for just such a purpose.
First real use of the system was in September 1988 and the number of applications has grown steadily. Significant video sequences have been generated for:
Other fields, such as turbulent flows (Cambridge) and molecular dynamics (Keele) are preparing to make videos on the system. The first video made of the FRAM results was recently shown in Southampton and provided unexpected insight into the flows around South Africa.
In addition, the Eurographics UK '89 conference was the location for a demonstration of the interchange of pictures between different computer systems in CGM format. Many of the 16 suppliers involved sent CGMs to Atlas, they were put onto videotape and the results shown at the conference. This exercise is being repeated in the much larger (and more public) forum of Computer Graphics '89 in Alexandra Palace on November 6-9 and a new videotape, including all the above and new contributions from the CGM demonstration suppliers will be on show.
The video facility, while not yet designated a production system, is now regularly producing output and is being improved continuously.
After the summer holiday, our short courses have started again in October. A new course called Knowledge Engineering will be available in January 1990. This three day course is designed to introduce EASE-supported research workers to the theory and practice of designing and developing knowledge-based systems. Engineering examples will be used throughout. The course will cover:
The popular AI Programming Paradigms course has been revised by taking into consideration the comments from previous course attendees. So, the course should be even better than before. This five day course introduces four different AI programming paradigms functional programming, logic programming, object-oriented programming and rule-based programming - using Lisp, Prolog, Sloop and OPS5. Lectures, exercises and practical sessions are allocated to each of the paradigms. The lectures introduce the basic ideas; the exercises are simple problems that will reinforce the lecture material; the practicals comprise substantial problems that require several hours of planning and programming.
The schedule for our short courses in the first six months of 1990 are:
These courses are provided as part of the EASE programme and they are free of charge to suitable applicants who are working on projects funded by SERC grants.
Under the AI Support for Engineers project, we are establishing an AI for Engineers Community Club, which will provide a focus for the activities of the support programme and will identify particular work areas and guide the choice of activity, such as surveyor workshop topic, or case study.
Members of the Community can be involved with the Club at any of several different levels by receiving and reading the material that will become available as part of the work of the project, attending workshops, being involved in the technical aspects of the chosen areas. The Club will have an advisory group of around eight people whose responsibility will be to represent the interests and needs of the community and specify work items that will meet those interests and needs. The advisory group will be reporting back to the community at an annual meeting. Feed back from the community will be sought to direct future work.
The Club will be launched on the 6th December at the one day seminar on Why Should Engineers Use AI Techniques, which is to be held at the RAL. There will be a number of invited talks on the relevance of AI in, and the application of AI to, different areas of engineering.
In the afternoon time will be devoted to the setting up of the Club. The objectives of the Club will be set, ideas for work items and activities will be sought and the Advisory Group will be formed.
At UMIST, we have been gathering together information and software which will facilitate the transfer of software from a SERC Prime (past or present) to a Sun. The ECF team at UMIST formerly supported the SERC Primes. A collected set of hints, suggestions, and look-up tables has been collated into a booklet entitled, Prime to Sun - Conversion Guide.
We will continue to offer a consultancy service for users making the transition from Primes to Suns. A small collection of conversion tools available from UMIST are detailed in the Guide. If you have already transferred software from a SERC Prime and to a Sun and have any advice or tools to offer, or would like the Guide, please contact ease@uk.ac.umist via e-mail.
Image Analysis and Transputers, 7 November.
Software Maintainability - How to Avoid ReInventing Wheels, 9 November.
Why Should Engineers Use AI Techniques, 6 December.
The Third Refinement Workshop 9-11 January, 1990 to be hosted by IBM UK Laboratories at Hursley Park.
Parallel Computing Hardware, Software and Techniques, UMIST, 18-20 April 1990
Numerical Methods Using Parallel Fortran on Transputer Arrays, 13/14 November
Transputer Familiarisation Course, 14/15 November, 12/13 December.
Introduction to Object Oriented Programming Concepts, 27 November and 30 January.
UNIX Introduction, 18-19 December.
Advanced Course in Smalltalk-80, 4-5 January.
Pure Functional Programming, 8-9 January.
UNIX Application Builders, 3-5 January.
Introduction to OOP using Smalltalk-80, 10-12 January.
Practical work carried out on Sun 3/50s. The cost of each course includes a full set of course notes, expert tuition throughout the duration of the course for both practical and theoretical sessions plus lunch and refreshments each day. It does not include overnight accommodation or car parking. However, a list of hotels is available and there is a visitors' car park only a couple of minutes walk from the Department.