Fifth Generation Computer Systems: Difference between revisions

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{{Tone|date=February 2019}}

The '''Fifth Generation Computer Systems ''' ('''FGCS'''; {{lang-langx|ja|第五世代コンピュータ|daigosedai konpyūta}}) was a 10-year initiative begunlaunched in 1982 by Japan's [[Ministry of International Trade and Industry]] (MITI) to createdevelop computers usingbased on [[massively parallel computing]] and [[logic programming]]. ItThe project aimed to create an "epoch-making computer" with supercomputer-like performance and to provideestablish a platform for future developmentsadvancements in [[artificial intelligence]]. Although FGCS was ahead of its time, and its excessiveambitious ambitionsgoals ultimately led to commercial failure. However, on a theoretical level, the project spurredsignificantly contributed to the development of [[concurrent logic programming]].

The term "fifth generation" was intendedchosen to conveyemphasize the system as being's advanced: nature. In the [[history of computing hardware]], there werehad been four prior "generations" of computers.: the Computersfirst generation usingutilized [[vacuum tube]]s were called; the first generation;second, [[transistor]]s and [[diode]]s,; the second;third, [[integrated circuit]]s, the third; and thosethe usingfourth, [[microprocessor]]s, the fourth. WhereasWhile previous computerearlier generations had focused on increasing the number of logic elements inwithin a single CPU, the fifth generation, it was widely believed at the time, that the fifth generation would insteadachieve turnenhanced toperformance massivethrough numbersthe use of CPUsmassive tonumbers gainof performanceCPUs.{{Citation needed|date=October 2023}}.

== Background ==

In the late 1960s until the early 1970s, there was much talk about "generations" of computer hardware, then usually organized into three generations.

# First generation: Thermionic vacuum tubes. Mid-1940s. IBM pioneered the arrangement of vacuum tubes in pluggable modules. The [[IBM 650]] was a first-generation computer.

# Second generation: Transistors. 1956. The era of miniaturization begins. Transistors are much smaller than vacuum tubes, draw less power, and generate less heat. Discrete transistors are soldered to circuit boards, with interconnections accomplished by stencil-screened conductive patterns on the reverse side. The [[IBM 7090]] was a second-generation computer.

# Third generation: Integrated circuits (silicon chips containing multiple transistors). 1964. A pioneering example is the ACPX module used in the IBM 360/91, which, by stacking layers of silicon over a ceramic substrate, accommodated over 20 transistors per chip; the chips could be packed together onto a circuit board to achieve unprecedented logic densities. The IBM 360/91 was a hybrid second- and third-generation computer.

Omitted from this taxonomy is the "zeroth-generation" computer based on metal gears (such as the [[IBM 407]]) or mechanical relays (such as the Mark I), and the post-third-generation computers based on Very Large Scale Integrated ([[VLSI]]) circuits.

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Throughout these multiple generations up to the 1970s, Japan built computers following U.S. and British leads. In the mid-1970s, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry stopped following western leads and started looking into the future of computing on a small scale. They asked the [[Japan Information Processing Development Center]] (JIPDEC) to indicate a number of future directions, and in 1979 offered a three-year contract to carry out more in-depth studies along with industry and academia. It was during this period that the term "fifth-generation computer" started to be used.

Prior to the 1970s, MITI guidance had successes such as an improved steel industry, the creation of the oil [[supertanker]], the [[automotive industry]], consumer electronics, and computer memory. MITI decided that the future was going to be [[information technology]]. However, the [[Japanese language]], particularly in its written form, presented and still presents obstacles for computers.<ref>J. Marshall Unger, ''The Fifth Generation Fallacy'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987)</ref> As a result of these hurdles, MITI held a conference to seek assistance from experts.

The primary fields for investigation from this initial project were:

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=== Concurrent logic programming ===

In 1982, during a visit to the ICOT, [[Ehud Shapiro]] invented Concurrent [[Prolog]], a novel programming language that integrated logic programming and concurrent programming. Concurrent Prolog is a [[Process-oriented programming|process oriented language]], which embodies [[dataflow]] synchronization and guarded-command [[Indeterminacy in concurrent computation|indeterminacy]] as its basic control mechanisms. Shapiro described the language in a Report marked as ICOT Technical Report 003,<ref>Shapiro E. A subset of Concurrent Prolog and its interpreter, ICOT Technical Report TR-003, Institute for New Generation Computer Technology, Tokyo, 1983. Also in Concurrent Prolog: Collected Papers, E. Shapiro (ed.), MIT Press, 1987, Chapter 2.</ref> which presented a Concurrent Prolog [[Interpreter (computing)|interpreter]] written in Prolog. Shapiro's work on Concurrent Prolog inspired a change in the direction of the FGCS from focusing on parallel implementation of Prolog to the focus on [[Logic programming#Concurrent logic programming|concurrent logic programming]] as the software foundation for the project.<ref name="EhudTrip"/> It also inspired the concurrent logic programming language Guarded Horn Clauses (GHC) by Ueda, which was the basis of [[KL1]], the programming language that was finally designed and implemented by the FGCS project as its core programming language.

The FGCS project and its findings contributed greatly to the development of the concurrent logic programming field. The project produced a new generation of promising Japanese researchers.

=== Commercial failure ===

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The FGCS Project did not meet with commercial success for reasons similar to the [[Lisp machine]] companies and [[Thinking Machines Corporation|Thinking Machines]]. The highly parallel computer architecture was eventually surpassed in speed by less specialized hardware (for example, Sun workstations and [[Intel]] [[x86]] machines).

A primary problem was the choice of concurrent logic programming as the bridge between the parallel computer architecture and the use of logic as a [[knowledge representation]] and problem solving language for AI applications. This never happened cleanly; a number of languages were developed, all with their own limitations. In particular, the committed choice feature of [[concurrent constraint logic programming]] interfered with the logical semantics of the languages.<ref>Carl Hewitt. [https://arxiv.org/abs/0904.3036 Inconsistency Robustness in Logic Programming] ArXiv 2009.</ref> The project found that the benefits of [[logic programming]] were largely negated by the use ofusing committed choice.{{Citation needed|date=August 2011}}

Another problem was that existing CPU performance quickly overcame the barriers that experts anticipated in the 1980s, and the value of parallel computing dropped to the point where it was for some time used only in niche situations. Although a number of [[workstation]]s of increasing capacity were designed and built over the project's lifespan, they generally found themselves soon outperformed by "off the shelf" units available commercially.

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In summary, the Fifth-Generation project was revolutionary, and accomplished some basic research that anticipated future research directions. Many papers and patents were published. MITI established a committee which assessed the performance of the FGCS Project as having made major contributions in computing, in particular eliminating bottlenecks in parallel processing software and the realization of intelligent

interactive processing based on large knowledge bases. However, the committee was strongly biased to justify the project, so this overstates the actual results.<ref name=Odagiri>{{Cite journal|last1=Odagiri|first1=Hiroyuki|last2=Nakamura|first2=Yoshiaki|last3=Shibuya|first3=Minorul|date=1997|title=Research consortia as a vehicle for basic research: The case of a fifth generation computer project in Japan|url=https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0048733397000085|journal=Research Policy|language=en|volume=26|issue=2|pages=191–207|doi=10.1016/S0048-7333(97)00008-5|url-access=subscription}}</ref>

Many of the themes seen in the Fifth-Generation project are now being re-interpreted in current technologies, as the hardware limitations foreseen in the 1980s were finally reached in the 2000s. When [[clock speed]]s of CPUs began to move into the 3–5&nbsp;GHz range, [[CPU power dissipation]] and other problems became more important. The ability of [[Private industry |industry]] to produce ever-faster single CPU systems (linked to [[Moore's Law]] about the periodic doubling of transistor counts) began to be threatened.

In the early 21st century, many flavors of [[parallel computing]] began to proliferate, including [[multi-core]] architectures at the low-end and [[massively parallel|massively parallel processing]] at the high end. Ordinary consumer machines and [[game console]]s began to have parallel processors like the [[Intel Core]], [[AMD K10]], and [[Cell (microprocessor)|Cell]]. [[Graphics card]] companies like Nvidia and AMD began introducing large parallel systems like [[CUDA]] and [[OpenCL]].

It appears, however, that these new technologies do not cite FGCS research. It is not clear if FGCS was leveraged to facilitate these developments in any significant way. No significant impact of FGCS on the computing industry has been demonstrated.{{cn|date=November 2022}}

== References ==

{{reflist}}

* {{Cite book |url=https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/C2009014415X |title=Fifth Generation Computer Systems |date=1982 |publisher=North Holland |isbn=978-0-444-86440-6 |editor-last=Moto-Oka |editor-first=Tohru |edition=1 |language=en |doi=10.1016/c2009-0-14415-x}}

* {{Cite book |last1=Feigenbaum |first1=Edward A. |title=The fifth generation: artificial intelligence and Japan's computer challenge to the world |last2=McCorduck |first2=Pamela |date=1987 |publisher=Addison Wesley |isbn=978-0-201-11519-2 |edition=4th pr |___location=Reading, Mass.}}

* {{Cite book |last=Bramer |first=M. A. (Max A. ) |url=https://archive.org/details/fifthgenerationa0000bram/ |title=The fifth generation : an annotated bibliography |date=1984 |publisher=Wokingham, England ; Reading, Mass. : Addison-Wesley |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-0-201-14427-7}}

* [https://www.ueda.info.waseda.ac.jp/AITEC_ICOT_ARCHIVES/ICOT/Museum/FinalReport/final.html <nowiki>第五世代コンピュータ・プロジェクト 最終評価報告書 [Fifth Generation Computer Project Final Evaluation Report] (March 30, 1993)</nowiki>]

== External links ==

* [https://www.ueda.info.waseda.ac.jp/AITEC_ICOT_ARCHIVES/ICOT/HomePage.html FGCS Museum] - contains a large archive of nearly all of the output of the FGCS project, including technical reports, technical memoranda, hardware specifications, and software.

* [https://mindtested.com/questions/168098/which-electronic-components-were-used Details about 5th Generation Computer] - How the Computer System evolved.

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