One of the stranger collaborations in Europe is the one between ICL Ltd, Siemens AG and Bull SA in Munich, where the three companies jointly finance an advanced research and development laboratory separate from any of the European funding programmes – the good thing about it is that it’s ours! former Bull chief Jacques Stern once said with great satisfaction. Little has been heard about the lab of late, but something concrete has just come out of it in the shape of the Knowledge Crunching Machine, a high-speed dedicated co-processor for Unix machines that is optimised for the Prolog list processing language. The partners say that the thing is enhanced with many hardware innovations and that it speeds Prolog execution 10 to 20 times over versions running on workstations without the co-processor. Siemens sees the thing being used in natural language systems, circuit verification and diagnostic and advisory systems and is attaching it to its high-end NS32000-based MX 300 Sinix machines. Bull will put it on its DPX/2 machines and ICL on Unix models in the DRS line. The part is still experimental, but the triohas 50 of the things available to research and industrial collaborators for evaluation. Although Lisp is the runaway winner in the artificial intelligence stakes in the US, Prolog probably still has the edge here in Europe and in Japan.
