🚀 go-pugleaf

This followup is from a friend (Akihiko Konagaya) who doesn't read
USENET News.

Pierre
--
In article <379@russell.STANFORD.EDU> suzuki@russell.UUCP (Hiroyuki Suzuki) writes:
>I was a user of PSI and Quintus on VAX 8700 in Japan a month ago.
>We had made several bench marks and the conclusion is
>
>	Quintus on VAX 8700 is faster than PSI if you write PROLOG
>
>PSI is specially designed for ESP(Extended Self-contained Prolog).
>So many re-writings are needed, though there is a PROLOG program for 
>translating PROLOG program into ESP program.  Furthermore ESP is
>still changing now.  So,
>				FORGET about PSI/ESP

It is true that PSI is rather slower. But it's not unfair to compare
a toy hardware and a workstation with a full programming environment.
Processor performance is considerablly diminished by various traps,
which are required for the environment.

As for performance, new PSI achieves 200-250 KLIPS. This is fairly good
because the performance of most useful application programs are 
determined by the performance of built-in predicates but "append program".
Futhermore, we know that 2 Mega LIPS is not so difficult, if we
develop a custom Prolog chip with 20 MHz.

The fastest Prolog machine currently available would be CHI-II developed at
NEC. It achieved 500KLIPS (See Habata etal, "Co-operative High Performance
Sequential Inference Machine" in ICCD '87 New York for the details).  The
full programming environment that includes multi-window interface, mutiple
process environment as well as ordinary programming tools such as an
optimizing compiler, an interpreter with incremental compiler, would be
available at the end of 1987.

CHI-II provides an extended prolog, named SUPLOG, which is powerful enough
to implement whole system programs on CHI-II. It supports not only
whole prolog language features but also supports multiple name space,
interprocess communication facilities and various data types (characters,
arrays, streams etc). The subset of SUPLOG will be available on a UNIX
workstation soon.

The prototype CHI, oridinally named HPM, achieved 280 KLIPS. Its
architecture and an programming environment are reported in:

   Nakazaki etal, "Design of a high-speed prolog machine HPM",
   in Proc. of Computer Architecture, 1985.

   Konagaya etal, "A Co-Operative Programming Environment for a Back
   -End Type Sequential Inference Machine CHI", in Proc. of
   Parallel Algorithms and Architecture, 1987, Akademie-Verlag Berlin.

Copies are available until Jan. 1988 in the following address:
   
   Akihiko Konagaya
   MIT Laboratory for Computer Science,
   545 Technology Square, room 252,
   Cambridge, MA 02139

In case of after Jan. 1988, try to access:

   Akihiko Konagaya
   Computer System Laboratory,
   C&C Systems Laboratories,
   NEC Coporation, 1-1 Miyazaki, 4-chome, Miyamae,
   Kawasaki, Kanagawa, 213 Japan