The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 26

Monday, May 8, 1989 COMPUTERS 26 The Sydney Morning Herald The fastest PC in the world? Fuzzy logic reaches lofty heights Difficult for me to write this without turning bright green with jealousy, but in maximum configuration you can have 1.280 gigabytes of on-line mass storage with an average access time of 16 milliseconds. In theory, with a bit of software trickery, you could format this as one disc drive, so that when you typed in there would be 1,280 megabytes of disc space to browse through. And you could access it three times as fast as you could with any normal computer. The Philips P3370 is very probably the most desirable personal computer in the world today. As far as I can ascertain after most diligent inquiry, it has no current rivals.

In full configuration, it will cost very serious money indeed, and will typically be used as a network server. Note: I have measured with great care under my desk and I can fit in a 3370 with nae trouble at all. There will be a minor problem in that with a computer as fast as this, you need seat belts and a crash hat. But I can cope, I can cope. OGP This has the great advantage of keeping your desktop free.

It has the great disadvantage that if you are working on your computer swapping boards an incessant hobby of mine you spend much of your time under your desk. And when things go wrong, ancient Celtic oaths arise from that dark fastness. This causes colleagues to give you strange looks. Still, on balance, it is a great advantage to have your computer tucked away. This superfast screamer and its superfast microprocessor chip is further aided by a fast 64-kiIo-byte static random access memory managed by an Intel 82385 cache controller.

You get four megabytes of random access memory the bit to which you load your programs and information, which is wiped clean when you switch off but this can be expanded to eight megabytes as standard or 32 megabytes with Intel 32-bit memory cards. The hard disc controller is ESDI, which means the discs are voice coil and lightning fast. 14 Why, then, are the Japanese so enthusiastic? It could be that they are the victims of a fad. The Japanese, in their Fifth Generation artificial intelligence project, adopted a computer language called Prolog that American scientists had ignored in favour of a language called Lisp. The fact that the Japanese adopted Prolog led to a reassessment of it in the US.

But so far the Fifth Generation work has not led to any striking breakthrough in technology, North American computer scientists say. Zadeh said the Japanese and others simply saw something the Americans were ignoring. "The people at Hitachi, they're not stupid people," Zadeh said, referring to the company that designed the fuzzy controller for the Sendai subway. "They wouldn't spend eight years working on this thing if it could be done by existing probabilistic means." Proponents say fuzzy logic has shown the ability to do some things quickly that traditional computer and control systems cannot do. One fuzzy controller developed in Japan can balance a thin stick on its end, a task that even people cannot do.

Now, partly because of the Japanese activity, interest in fuzzy logic seems to be stirring in the US. One American company, Togai Infralogic, has been formed to specialise in fuzzy logic. It has developed software tools for fuzzy systems development and is now working on a fuzzy logic computer chip that can operate at 40 kiloflips, or 40,000 fuzzy logic inferences a second. Perhaps the biggest endorsement comes from Rockwell International, the aerospace company, which has asked the Pentagon's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency to finance a fuzzy logic initiative. "I do believe it has a high potential and is definitely worthy of more investigation and evaluation," said Allen Firstenberg, director of information sciences at the Rockwell International Science Centre in California.

If fuzzy logic does prove useful, one thing is certain. The US will be behind the Japanese. "It will be very difficult for us to catch up," Zadeh said. "They are already so far ahead, particularly in applications involving the concept of fuzzy sets. Most sets have well-defined members, like the exact number of employees in a given office or the exact number of people over a certain height in a certain group.

But fuzzy sets have various degrees of membership. The set of all tall people is such a set. Some members are tall; others are very tall, and the rest are not so tall. Fuzzy logic has found its first uses in controlling industrial processes, like cement kilns. In a chemical plant, for instance, a temperature of 1,000 degrees 6 Interest in fuzzy logic seems to be stirring in the US.9 might have a membership of 0.9S in the set of hot temperatures, while a temperature of 600 degrees might have a membership of only 0.5.

A computer program for controlling the plant might have a rule stating: "If the temperature is high, lower the pressure." Zadeh was the chairman of the electrical engineering and computer science department at Berkeley in 1965, when he published his first paper on fuzzy logic. "If I did not have that kind of position, I would have had a lot harder time getting support and having my papers published," he said. Many American computer scientists are working to give computers artificial intelligence. But their systems, which allow computers to do tasks like diagnosing diseases or determining what is wrong with a malfunctioning automobile, are based on the rule of conventional logic, rather than the fuzzy variety. Zadeh said it was his opposition to the consensus approach that led to his ideas being ignored.

But American computer scientists say they have not ignored the need to handle approximate information. They just use other approaches. One such approach, which is well developed, is based on the probability theory. A newer approach is called qualitative physics. "There has been a lot of support for that kind of reasoning," said Nilsson, who called fuzzy logic "idiosyncratic." By ANDREW POLLACK FDR a quarter of a century, Lotfi Zadeh has been preaching an obscure computer theory with a funny name: fuzzy logic.

Although Zadeh's ideas have largely been ignored in America, his theory is finding practical uses in Japan. Zadeh, a professor of computer science at the University of California, created fuzzy logic to allow computers to work with imprecise terms, like "hot" or rather than the precise numbers and exacting decision-making they normally handle. Such ability to handle ambiguity could give computers more human-like intelligence, and have wide application in running everything from trains to home appliances. The Japanese have been quickest to apply fuzzy logic A fuzzy system developed by Hitachi is used to control subway trains in the city of Sendai, accelerating and decelerating cars more smoothly than a human driver could, its proponents say. This month, in its biggest commitment yet to the technology, Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry will open a new Laboratory for International Fuzzy Engineering Research, or LIFE, with a budget of SUS36 million over six years and 44 member companies.

Fuzzy logic, which some American experts say has been oversold, is the subject of Japanese news reports and television documentaries, and fuzzy control systems are already used in some cranes and elevators. Fuzzy theory is being evaluated for everything from controlling nuclear power plants to detecting drowsiness in drivers and helping golfers choose the right clubs. Researchers say that fuzzy control systems will begin showing up in a year in consumer products ranging from smoother automobile cruise control systems to air-conditioners that control temperature and humidity. Fuzzy logic has also become a focus of study in China, the Soviet Union and Europe almost everywhere, in fact, except the United States. Zadeh's narrow office in the US is crammed with thousands of books, papers and reports on fuzzy theory and its offshoots: GM in the US because computer science there is more sophisticated than elsewhere.

Far from a prophet, they say, Zadeh has been expert at generating a cult following around the world with little science to back up his claims. Other people think that while fuzzy logic might be useful in some cases, it has been oversold. "The advocates of fuzzy logic are so excited about it they give the impression it can be used for everything," said Judea Pearl, professor of computer science at the University of California. He and others say that fuzzy logic has failed in some situations. In other cases, it performs tasks that could be done by other computer methods or by something as simple as a thermostat.

The idea behind fuzzy logic is to allow computers to behave more like people. And people, unlike computers, are not precise. "We get carried away in our quest for precision," said Zadeh. "We have to come to terms with the pervasive imprecision of the real world." The way fuzzy logic handles such imprecise terms is through fuzzy control, fuzzy mathematics, fuzzy computers and fuzzy databases. As the father of fuzziness, Zadeh, 68, occupies an esteemed place in the world.

"Zadeh has spawned whole societies devoted to his brand of fuzzy logic," said Nils Nilsson, the chairman of the computer science department at Stanford University. To believers, fuzzy logic is the latest example of how ideas 6 We get carried away in our quest for precision. generated in the US are being more vigorously pursued and commercialised by the Japanese and other foreign nations. "It's the classic idea of the prophet not being appreciated in his own backyard," said Ronald Yager, director of the Machine Intelligence Institute at Iona College in New York. Doubters contend that fuzzy logic has not been widely accepted PHILIPS has moved very seriously into the world of personal computers.

First, we had the launch of its impressive line of new machines in Sydney. Then we had a subsidised book on personal computing being given away modesty forbids mentioning the author's name. Now, we have Philips coming in at the hotsy totsy end of personal computers with the ultimate machine. This- has so far only been released in Europe, but no doubt we will be seeing it in Australia in the very near future. This new computer is an 80386 machine, with the processor running at 33 megahertz, and is romantically called the P3370.

Making the following statement is fraught with danger. As far as I can ascertain, and after checking with the lastest issue of Byte, the best computer magazine in the world, the Philips P3370 is the fastest personal computer in existence today. This is a tower machine; that is, the main body of the church sits under your desk in a vertical or steeple position. 1 Jlie to Hi to fenny i i I 8 i JULL "Someone will definitely get fired for not buying Amstrad at ABETS" The new Amstrad PC 2000 series of business computers are as powerful as the excellent IBM equivalents, at around half the price. You can't afford not to test one at BABETS Sydney's leading Amstrad specialist.

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