NEC Corp’s agreement with Omron Corp to combine Omron’s fuzzy inference software technology with NEC’s semiconductor technology, covers the development of fuzzy inference development support systems, and microprocessors that will execute fuzzy inference logic. The products will be sold by both firms. Specifically the agreement provides for Omron to provide NEC with technical information on a fuzzy knowledge data development tool, of which a version called the FS-1000 has been on sale since October 1990, and license its patents. NEC will then develop fuzzy inference modules to be embedded with its own 4-bit 75X series of microcontrollers. Omron will develop the compiler for the 4-bit and 8-bit microcontrollers and the two have also agreed to standardise nomenclature used for fuzzy logic, and work on development techniques for future fuzzy control processors.
NICHIMEN TO MARKET Xi PLUS IN JAPAN
The change in ownership of the British expert system tool Xi Plus – now part of the Inference Corp line-up – has had ramifications in the Japanese market, where Mitsubishi Materials Co, previously the exclusive distributor for the developer of the package, Expertech Ltd, is to now concentrate its sales on the Mitsubishi group market, while Nichimen Co, through its existing relationship with Inference Corp, which bought Expertech to form Inference Expertech, is to target its sales to the rest of Japanese industry; Xi Plus has been implemented on the NEC Corp PC-9800 line and runs in Japanese, and with a considerable price cut to $1,400 from $4,410, Nichimen hopes to sell 500 copies of the thing in the first year of marketing.
