In response to last month's article on Mathematica, we now have one on Maple. Community Clubs and major SERC Initiatives are highlighted in this month's edition. Especially note the invitation to bid for the EMR contract in the use of standards on the back page. The EASE events programme for the Autumn is also on the back page - if a subject that is of particular interest to you has not been included, I would like to hear from you. Also. the programme for EASE 91 at Birmingham is still be put together - again you have the opportunity to request items of your special interest.
The Electro Mechanical Engineering Committee (EMEC) of the SERC Engineering Board is responsible for research intended to strategically support the needs of industry in the UK. The importance of information technology (IT) in the Committee's research programmes has grown steadily in recent years, design, monitoring, embedded control, with simulation and modelling projects forming a major part of the EMEC research portfolio.
EMEC is divided into three subcommittees by industrial sector, these being Aerospace Industries, Electrical and Power Industries and Machinery, Plant and Vehicle Industries. The application of IT spans all the subcommittees. For example, current application areas include computational fluid dynamics to study modelling of internal and external fluid flows in engines, structural integrity to model and predict crack propagation and stress deformation, power systems simulation, expert design assistants, integrated machine systems, advanced control which entails replacing mechanical complexity by advanced electronic control systems.
Given the clear importance of IT in EMEC's research programmes the Committee has developed a policy to identify the communities' future requirements for IT. This provided the basis of a presentation given by John Loughhead (GEC ALSTHOM) at the recent EASE conference. Areas we have identified as becoming increasingly important include parallelism, for analysis and simulation (eg CFD); highly intelligent design systems; control of complex non-causal systems and finally; robust fault tolerant machine systems involving advanced sensors, multi-sensor data fusion, intelligent control and signal processing.
In order to meet the future IT requirements of EMEC as outlined, there will be a need for hardware and software developments to underpin the activity. While it is always dangerous to generalise, we have concluded that for hardware, although demand will change continually, proprietary products will be generally preferable to 'special purpose' machines. It is also recognised that for analysis, simulation and modelling, the trend towards locally-based distributed computing networks with individual workstations is likely to continue. Other requirements for embedded hardware in machine and electrical systems are:
Software requirements are much harder to define. We feel certain that we will have to continue to seek advice on the acquisition and use of proprietary software. This is likely to be very . important, for example, in the initial period of exploitation of parallel machines. In the design of software we envisage some major developments, eg:
Finally, but of critical importance, if EMEC's IT requirements are to be recognised and acted upon, there is a need for communication between the IT and EMEC communities. The tools 1I1d facilities required by engineers and the expertise to use them will only be developed through collaboration between the two communities. Dialogue is critically important to ensure that the potential of novel IT techniques are understood by engineers and that information technologists understand the needs of engineers. Dialogue can be stimulated by the invitation to start collaborative projects as recently encouraged by the IT in Engineering Initiative. EMEC is currently working on a new programme under this initiative on aspects of multi-sensor data fusion, situation assessment and intelligent control for advanced engineering systems. Co-ordination is clearly needed to maximise resource targeting, aid exploitation and to minimise duplication. In addition, a strong support mechanism will be needed to encourage and foster collaboration and understanding between EMEC and the IT community.
The SERC has decided to set up an Industrial Affairs Unit (IAU). The aims of the unit are to co-ordinate the existing industrially related programmes of SERC, including LINK programme, and any new ones that may arise, to raise SERC's image in industry and to find more effective ways of absorbing advice and information from industry within SERC, in particular in the Peer Review System.
SERC runs a number of schemes for collaboration between Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), its own research laboratories and industry. Some of these schemes are collaborative with government departments. Here is a quick reminder of what is available:
Industry joins with SERC on a 50-50 basis to fund a specific research programme in an HEI. Industry's input is not necessarily all financial.
Research students (normally graduates) receive a standard SERC studentship, topped up with extra funds from industry and SERC, to carry out a research programme defined by the industrial partner in collaboration with the HEI investigator.
Developing active partnerships between HEIs and industry in order to transfer technology and trainable graduates for careers in industry.
There are now more than twenty LINK programmes ranging from molecular electronics to crops for industrial use and nanotechnology to selective drug delivery and targeting. These schemes aim to fund collaborative precompetitive research within specific targeted programmes of significant national importance.
Aimed at giving postgraduates in industry the opportunity to get a higher degree without loss of salary and on a project of significance to both the company and academic department.
For the more senior researcher in both industry and academe, a chance to carry through a research programme significant to industry and academe.
Provides an industrially-oriented training programme in the first years of a postgraduate student's work with a company.
A pilot scheme to provide a fully rounded engineering PhD with skills in all functions of engineering together with management skills. Available at five universities. Interdisciplinary Research Centres (IRCs) Centres in strategically significant research areas and established groups with large scale funding on a rolling grant basis. These Centres are encouraged to collaborate with industry and obtain additional funding.
Aimed at earmarking funding for strategically important research areas in both science and engineering.
SERC's establishments have many facilities and considerable expertise relevant to industry. SERC has also funded major facilities in HEIs which may be available to industrial users.
The IAU will be delighted to act as a first point of contact for either an academic or an industrialist wishing to learn more about these schemes or to find the best way to obtain a marriage partner.
There can be no doubt that the DCS, Alvey and ESPRIT programmes and latterly JFIT have been very successful in developing advanced information technology expertise and research capability in British universities and polytechnics. However, there is concern that UK industry, both IT suppliers and users, has not benefited from the expertise and knowledge built up to the degree we would all wish. There are complex reasons for this which I am not well qualified to address but I should like to draw readers' attention to the Teaching Company Scheme as a means of improving this situation.
The Teaching Company Scheme was initiated in 1975 in order to improve the competitiveness of British industry by simultaneously:
The Scheme works by establishing partnerships between companies wishing to achieve a major advance in their activities and academic groups who have the advanced knowledge which the companies need to achieve that change. Thus a typical Teaching Company programme might involve a company wishing to improve the design, production and marketing of its product range in partnership with academics from the engineering and management faculties of a local polytechnic or university. A Teaching Company grant would contribute to the cost of employing young graduates to work in the firm on well defined projects under joint academic and industrial supervision. The grant would also provide a contribution to the cost of releasing the academics involved from some of their normal duties so they could spend a significant amount of time on the company premises helping to supervise the projects and the development of the graduates. In addition to learning through working on advanced but practical problems in a company environment, the graduates would spend at least 10% of their time on courses designed to deepen their technical knowledge and broaden their personal perspectives.
Most Teaching Company programmes are very successful in terms of companies achieving major technological and managerial goals which, without academic expertise, would be beyond their grasp and in providing the young graduates, known as Teaching Company Associates, with a superb starting point for high profile industrial career.
We recently started the 800th partnership and, currently, there are about 370 programmes in operation. They cover a very wide variety of industrial sectors and academic disciplines and involve firms of all sizes. More than 50% of former associates stay with their host firm, many rising rapidly in senior positions. There is quite a fashion now for former associates, having achieved managerial positions, initiating Teaching Company programmes of their own.
The benefits to industry and to young graduates are clear to see. But what about academics? They benefit from the experience of applying their knowledge in a practical situation which almost invariably leads to a reappraisal of that knowledge and frequently to ideas for further research. Teaching material is often improved through greater familiarity with industrial practice and the availability of case study material. There are also, of course, opportunities for publication subject to commercial confidentiality. Experienced Teaching Company practitioners will say that perhaps the largest benefit - to academics and their industrial partners - is the establishment of fruitful relationships which outlast the Teaching Company programme which spawned them.
So much for the hard sell! How does this relate to IT research and the Transputer Initiative? Quite simply, I see the Teaching Company Scheme as an ideal way of forming links between academic IT specialists and industry so as to increase the practical utilisation of IT in industry and to develop graduates capable of exploiting information technology to the full. Looking more specifically at the Transputer Initiative, I see a UK-developed technology with great potential for application in industry with the help of academic expertise in parallel processing and applications. In many cases, Teaching Company could provide the necessary bridge. Mike Jane and I have discussed this and we both feel that the network of contacts built up by the Transputer Initiative and its regional centres is an excellent medium for publicising this opportunity and forming beneficial links.
To borrow some jargon, the Teaching Company Scheme has a very user-friendly interface. If you want to know more, you have only to contact the Directorate and we will send you brochures containing further details about the Scheme and case studies. A 25 minute video describing some successful programmes is also available at a nominal charge.
Maple is a computer algebra system designed and written at the University of Waterloo in Canada. The first version of Maple was written in 1980 and it has been extended and improved continuously so that it is now one of the most powerful and versatile computer algebra systems currently available. It runs on a wide range of machines, from micros such as the Apple Macintosh and 80386-based PC-compatibles up to VAX, IBM and Cray mainframes. It also runs on all of the popular UNIX workstations, including SUN-3, SUN-4 and Sparcstations.
Like all computer algebra systems, Maple is designed to perform calculations with symbols as well as numbers. This ability sets computer algebra systems apart from languages such as FORTRAN and Pascal which can only perform numerical calculations.
Maple can expand and factorise polynomials, re-order them in powers of a chosen variables and even re-write them in nested (Homer) form, so that a polynomial such as
x3 + 4x2 - 3x + 4 becomes (((x + 4)x - 3)x + 4)
which is the most efficient form for numerical evaluation.
Maple can also simplify mathematical expressions which involve complex numbers, rational functions and radicals (square roots and cube roots, for example). It recognises a wide range of special mathematical functions and their properties, from the familiar sine, cosine and logarithm to functions such as Bessel functions, the Gamma function and Fresnel sine and cosine integral functions. These are functions which occur very frequently in calculations in science and engineering.
Maple can differentiate and integrate many types of mathematical expression, and can evaluate definite integrals algebraically or numerically. It can also calculate Taylor series expansions of functions and determine limits and sums and products of sequences. One of Maple's most valuable features is its ability to solve ordinary differential equations and produce algebraic solutions. When a differential equation cannot be solved directly, Maple can employ Laplace transforms or calculate an approximate power series solution.
Maple can solve a wide range of algebraic equations. It can give solutions to any polynomial equation up to degree 4, hence solving the general quadratic or cubic or quartic equation in just a few seconds. It can solve a set of simultaneous linear equations, including over-determined sets where there are more equations than unknown variables and a least-squares solution must be calculated.
It can also solve a variety of simultaneous non-linear equations and it includes the powerful Groebner basis method for transforming a set of equations which cannot be solved directly into an equivalent set that may be easier to solve.
Maple provides a powerful programming language which is very easy to learn and use. Most of the Maple system itself is written in the Maple programming language: only about 10% of Maple (the kernel) is written in C, whilst the remainder is written in the high-level language which is also available to the user. This means that the user has access to all of the data types of Maple. In addition to basic algebraic expressions, these types include lists, sets, arrays, matrices, tables, ranges and power series. The user can test the type of an object and analyse its component parts. This makes Maple a true symbolic manipulation system (like LISP) as well as a computer algebra system.
Maple includes commands which enable it to write complicated mathematical expressions in FORTRAN form, which can be embedded into a user's program, or in the typesetting language TeX which can be embedded in a paper or report. It is far better to make Maple produce FORTRAN or TeX code than to copy it by hand. Maple won't make mistakes when copying the expressions! Maple can create the TeX commands to typeset mathematical formulae very easily.
In the last two years, new computer algebra systems have been released which include sophisticated graphical interfaces. Mathematica, in particular, has set the standard for graphics in three dimensions with its ability to draw surfaces and shade them to give a very convincing appearance of depth and solidity. Maple version 4.4, released in May 1990, offers 3-D drawings of surfaces which may either be shaded (like Mathematica) or drawn as wire frames with hidden lines removed, or simply drawn as a set of points.
In addition, an X window system interface is also provided to enable graphics to be displayed alongside mathematical expressions. The X window system interface also allows the user to run Maple on a remote machine whilst using a local workstation simply to display the mathematical output and the graphics, thus harnessing the computing power of the remote machine with the high-resolution display of a workstation.
Maple incorporates an extensive on-line help system which gives a complete description of any Maple command or function, including examples which show how the command or function is used. The help system is invoked from within Maple and the information which it displays is taken directly f rom the Maple Reference Manual, thus providing an on-line copy of the Reference Manual.
Maple is supplied with a Reference Manual which describes the system in great detail and provides information on Maple programming and all of the commands and functions that are available to the user. There is also a booklet entitled First Leaves: A Tutorial Introduction to Maple. Each copy of the software is accompanied by these two books.
In addition, the Computer Algebra Support Project at Liverpool University has produced a guide entitled An Introduction to Maple. The TeX source for this guide can be obtained by sending the message GET MAPLEDOC PACKAGE by electronic-mail to: the address LISTSERV@UK.AC.LIVERPOOL The Computer Algebra Support Project can provide information about the price and availability of Maple.
Good communications make a valuable contribution to successful research. The EASE Programme has provided a forum in a number of ways to enable researchers to be in contact with those sharing a common interest both from their own and other disciplines and within the research community in HEIs and in industry.
Community Clubs have been set up to enable greater interaction between IT developers and the engineering research community in specific application areas. Members of the community are invited to bid both for involvement in Clubs whose subjects are already agreed and also to put forward recommendations to CFC for topics to be covered where foods are available for the formation of a new club. Community Clubs are open in membership, involve industry, have a fixed term (maximum 3 years) CFC support (thereafter should be self supporting) and should not be preexisting.
The format of Clubs is agreed by its members at an Annual Open Meeting. This will include a programme of work as defined by its members with a number of projects to be carried out in HEIs directed towards finding solutions to specific problems. Meetings include presentations on current activities and future plans, drawing up proposals for new activities within EASE, exchange of views and information with discussions of technical issues and identification of the support needed by engineers that RAL can provide. Provision of a mechanism for disseminating information through seminars, meetings and workshops may also be made. There are currently four such Clubs:-
Do you have large quantities of spatial data which needs analysing? For example:
Such examples demonstrate that the central component of most planning and resource management tasks is the manipulation of large volumes of spatially referenced data. In the past, the above problems would have been impossible or prohibitively expensive to determine to any reasonable degree of accuracy. Today, however, tools to help answer questions such as these are now available in the form of Geographical Information Systems (GIS). As can be seen, GIS is not restricted to producing colourful maps and charts, etc; it is a system to analyse spatial situations and solve geographical problems.
GISs are software packages designed to perform the storage, manipulation, analysis, and display of large volumes of spatial data. The data used often include demographic and socio-economic figures, land use and land cover data (satellite imagery possibly), and topographic and planimetric map features. The only characteristic required for a phenomenon to be represented in a GIS is some measure of spatial reference, most often in the form of polar or cartesian (rectangular) co-ordinates.
Once data has been entered into the GIS database, a wide variety of analyses and simulations may be performed on it. Results of these analyses can then be produced as graphical displays or statistical summaries, helping me user to solve his or her particular spatial problem.
To help promote the use of this evolving technology, Manchester Computing Centre is instituting a national GIS service. In conjunction with a larger initiative to expand the use and availability of GIS software in the UK, MCC is devoting both staff and computational resources to this effort. In addition to a full time centre employee already working with GIS, the position of Geographical Information Systems Support Officer has recently been filled. Funded by the National Computer Board, the purpose of this two year post is to support centralised GIS software, produce documentation for special packages as well as general GIS topics, and to conduct seminars on introductory and special interest issues.
A presentation on GIS and its uses will be included in Engineering Data Integration - Problems and Solutions seminar on 7 November 1990 at Loughborough (see separate insert for details).
CTACC was launched at an open meeting held on 6 July 1989 at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory under the auspices of the SERC/DTI Initiative in the Engineering Applications of Transputers. The meeting elected an executive committee comprising eight academic, three industrial and two Initiative members. The executive has met 3 times and has undertaken the activities below.
CTACC was adopted as an EASE Community Club following the Computing Facilities Committee meeting on 23 May 1990. This does not affect the organisation of the Club, but does allow for some funds to be channelled into the area.
Membership of CTACC is free and is open worldwide to anybody working, or interested, in the application of transputers to real time control. Information on members' interests has been collected through a questionnaire and will be used to form an activity directory. CTACC has a current membership of about 100. Anyone wishing to join CTACC should contact the secretary.
E-mail is the chief means of communication within CTACC. A broadcast facility has been established whereby messages sent to CTACC@UK.AC.RL.lNF are redistributed to all CTACC members possessing e-mail addresses.
CTACC publishes a newsletter. The first issue was included with the Initiative Mailshot in January 1990 and the second issue is due for publication shortly.
Two man years of research funding is available for the development of transputer-based demonstrators. Four contracts of six months duration will be let over two years. CTACC has advised on the selection of the first contract.
CTACC sponsored an IEE Research Colloquium on Parallel processing in control - the transputer and other architectures held in London on 28 March 1990. One benefit of sponsorship was that CTACC members were able to attend at IEE member rates.
CTACC has provided advice to the organising committee of Transputer Applications 90 Conference on the selection and scheduling of conference papers in real time control. The conference took place in Southampton on 11-13 July.
A second open meeting will be held in December 1990.
The EASE Community Club in CFD, in collaboration with the Institute for Computational Fluid Dynamics (ICFD), will hold a two day workshop at Abingdon on 15-16 November 1990. The meeting will be chaired by Prof. K W Morton (Oxford). The need for this workshop was clearly identified at the inaugural meeting of the Club in March. The purpose of the workshop is to promote the use in the community of the best numerical techniques from the standpoint of accuracy currently available in CFD, and to identify future activities in the community.
The workshop will review the current trends in numerical techniques used in CFD in the representation of the governing equations and the underlying physical models, and highlight problems associated with the accuracy and stability of the solution techniques. There will be presentations on:
There will also be discussion sessions to:
A full programme and booking form for the workshop will appear in next month's newsletter. A preliminary announcement and contact for further information appear in the Forthcoming Events section of this issue.
As part of the AI Support for Engineers project the Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute, University of Edinburgh, is producing a series of technical reports on AI tools. An evaluation of KAPPA is being prepared currently.
KAPPA is the latest of the new range of products to be released into the knowledge-based systems software market. It is a PC-based tool, written in C, which runs in Microsoft Windows. However unlike many of the other KBS development tools around, it contains a sophisticated development environment and a range of knowledge representations including an object data structure and rules. All in all it is more akin to the hybrid toolkits which run on larger, more specialised workstations than to many of the PC-based products currently available. Moreover it is the first tool of its kind to provide all these facilities within 640K RAM.
KAPPA was developed originally by a small Boston-based company, MegaKnowledge. Intellicorp acquired MegaKnowledge with the view to developing a MS-DOS product line and establish a firmer presence in the conventional tools market. KAPPA is currently being marketed alongside Intellicorp's LISP-based hybrid toolkit, KEE. KAPPA already possesses a number of KEE-like features although Intellicorp have not altered it substantially to resemble KEE. It is anticipated that further development will take place to expand KAPPA in line with KEE and KEE-to-KAPPA migration software may be provided to enable KAPPA to be used as a delivery environment for KEE applications. However this has not been confirmed by Intellicorp.
Although it is so new in excess of 2000 of KAPPA have been sold worldwide, with 1500 runtime licences going to a single company in the US for delivery of a system already developed using another high-end PC-based development environment.
This evaluation will concentrate on the features available within KAPPA, the development and delivery environments, and the quality of the documentation. The report will be made available in September.
Other reports in the series include Crystal, Xi Plus, ART-IM and a review of the interfacing capabilities of various PC-based tools.
This workshop is the first of two one day events to be organised by the Community Club for AI in Engineering, in conjunction with the IEE. It stems from an initiative of the recently established SERC committee (EASE Programme) to promote the development and application of AI tools and techniques within Engineering applications. It is hosted by Professional groups C4 (Artificial Intelligence) and C8 (Control and Systems Theory) and will start at 10.30am.
The meeting will attempt to expose the crucial issues underlying the development of AI methods within each of the main branches of Engineering. In particular keynote speakers will present overviews of developments within Control, Electrical and Electronic, Mechanical, Civil and Chemical Engineering. A review of the functionality of current commercially available AI tools will be given. There will be ample time devoted to discussion and a significant input from attendees is anticipated.
Due to support from SERC via their EASE Programme some training places are available free of charge to academic engineers:
The following books are available to SERC grant holders:
The Computing Facilities Committee (CFC) wishes to encourage the development and use of standards in engineering computing.
The first open meeting of the Community Club on Modelling and Management of Engineering Data (CCMMED) decided that the Club should, as part of its activities, evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed ISO standard for engineering data exchange, S1EP. Control engineering was identifIed as a new and interdisciplinary area suitable for the task.
CCMMED is thus inviting bids for consideration by CFC for an EMR contract to develop an information model for use in exchange of control engineering data. The contract offered will fund up to six person months of effort. The project should aim to highlight the problems encountered modelling this novel application domain, adding to the available body of knowledge on engineering data modelling in addition to advancing standards for use in the control industry. The information model should be written in the Express language, part of the proposed STEP standard.
Applicants should demonstrate relevant experience and a knowledge of both the control industry and data modelling techniques. Proposals should indicate a mechanism for obtaining the broad-based approach essential for standards activities. Time and cost estimates must be provided - the project should start in October 1990, or as soon as possible after that date.
The immediate effects of the financial pressures on SERC was to force the ICF to review the number of machines it supported and to cease support for those which were either not cost effective or, in the case of the DEC10 at Edinburgh, were high (the DEC10 cost six times more to run than the average GEC or Prime machine). The GEC Operating System, also heavily modified by the ICF, was frozen in 1985.
In 1985 the Prime at Nottingham, the DEC10 at Edinburgh and six GEC machines had their ICF support withdrawn.
Continuing financial pressure coupled with the success of the Single User System Programme with the appearance of Sun Microsystems resulted in further machine closures during this period. By the end of 1987 there were in excess of 400 SUN workstations supported by the Engineering Board throughout the UK. The Computer Board also began to fund interactive computing facilities during this period and in many cases these were able to provide the necessary resources for SERC grant holders.
The SERC version of PRIMOS was frozen at Rev 20.2.4 in 1987. The GINO-F Graphics system was frozen at level 2.6 in 1985 when the Graphical Kernel System, GKS was introduced. By September 1987 full ISO GKS Level 2b was available on the remaining ICF Primes. Applications developments were also frozen in 1986 although the central support for the existing packages was still available.
Inevitably demand for the still large ICF resources began to drop and between March 1986 and May 1988 all remote machines had their ICF support withdrawn. The last GEC service machine, the RAL 4090, was switched off in December 1988. The RAL service Prime was upgraded to a P9955 from 2 × P750 in 1986 and ran until March 1990.
Table 1 gives a total summary of the ICF machines for the period 1976-1990. Table 2, overleaf, summarises the typical final configurations by machine type.
| Location | Initial Machine | Intermediate Machines | Final Machine | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Date | Type | Date | Type | |||
| RAL (Service) | 1977 | P400 | 2 ×P400; 2×P750 | 1986 | P9955 | |
| RAL (Dev) | 1977 | P300 | P400;P550/1 | 1986 | P9655 | |
| Sussex | 1979 | P550/1 | - | - | - | |
| City | 1980 | P550/1 | - | 1986 | P750 | |
| Surrey | 1980 | P550/1 | - | 1986 | P550/2 | |
| UCL | 1980 | P550/1 | - | 1986 | P750 | |
| UMIST | 1980 | P750 | P9950 | 1985 | P9955/1 | |
| Warwick | 1980 | P550/1 | P550/2 | 1986 | P750 | |
| East Anglia | 1979 | P400 | - | 1983 | P550/1 | |
| Nottingham | 1977 | P400 | - | 1985 | P9655 | |
| Birmingham | 1979 | GEC 4085 | - | - | - | |
| Bradford | 1979 | GEC 4082 | - | - | - | |
| Bristol | 1978 | GEC 4070 | - | 1984 | GEC 4090 | |
| Cambridge | 1979 | GEC 4080 | - | 1984 | GEC 4090 | |
| Cranfield | 1979 | GEC 4070 | - | - | - | |
| Cardiff | 1979 | GEC 4080 | - | 1984 | GEC4090 | |
| Glasgow | 1979 | GEC 4070 | - | 1985 | GEC4180 | |
| Heriot-Watt | 1981 | GEC 4080 | - | - | - | |
| Newcastle | 1979 | GEC 4070 | - | - | - | |
| RAL (Service) | 1977 | GEC 4070 | GEC 4080 | 1983 | GEC 4090 | |
| RAL (Dev) | 1983 | GEC 4090 | - | - | - | |
| QMC | 1981 | GEC 4080 | - | 1985 | GEC4180 | |
| P550 | P750 | P9955 | GEC4070/80 | GEC4090 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Memory (Mb) | 1 | 2-4 | 8-12 | 0.5 | 1 |
| Disk Space (Mb) | 500 | 1200 | 2700 | 160 | 600 |
| Magnetic Tape | 1 × 9 track | 1 × 9 track | 1 × 9 track | 1 × 9 track | 1 × 9 track |
| Printers | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Plotters | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Many university research groups collaborate closely with industry, particularly in the areas supported by the Engineering Board. The following three activities are given as excellent examples of successful collaborations which have made heavy and effective use of the ICF Primes and in two of the three cases the companies involved purchased their own Prime machines:
The first commercial package developed on the ICF Prime was SAMMIE (a System for Aiding the Man-Machine Interaction Evaluation). The development started on the P300 at Nottingham before the ICF started and the commercial package, completed on the ICF P400, was marketed worldwide by Compeda Limited. Prime, of course, took over Compeda Limited in 1982 and now share the worldwide marketing rights for the Prime version with SAMMIE-CAD.
The ICF has proved to be an unqualified success for the SERC's Engineering Board. In the fourteen year period between 1976 and 1990 a total of approximately 20,000 users have benefited from the service offered on the various machines. The estimated total cost of the ICF service, including capital, maintenance and manpower, over this period is £20m. The ICF allowed researchers to concentrate on their research and enabled innovative research projects to be undertaken which would not otherwise have been possible.
As an added bonus, the success of the ICF led to the purchase of a number of similar machines by SERC, including the establishment of the successful Schools Project based on machines donated by Prime.
Additional proof of the success lies in the fact that several institutions took over responsibility for their machines, both GEC and Prime, when the ICF support was withdrawn. The UMIST Prime is still running a service today.
Of course the ICF could not have been so successful without the efforts of all the people involved, too numerous to attempt to mention individually by name. The Site Managers, Systems, User Support, Communications, Resource Management and Operations staff, local User Groups and, indeed the users all contributed significantly to the success story.
Finally on a personal note, I was involved in the ICF from the outset and throughout its fourteen year life. It was a pleasure to be a part of the ICF and will be a period of my life where I have many happy memories to look back on.
This article concludes this series about the ICF.
