COMMENT ⊗   VALID 00005 PAGES
C REC  PAGE   DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00002 00002							1983  May 29
C00004 00003		The opportunity is to continue the degree of compatibility that
C00006 00004	Here is my list of desiderata.  I am prepared to argue for them, but
C00011 00005	IBM ACIS (from Branscomb)
C00012 ENDMK
C⊗;
						1983  May 29

	Conference on a request for proposals (RFP) for a new computer
science time-sharing system.

	The decision by Digital Equipment Corp. to abandon the project to
make a compatible successor to the 2060 presents the computer science
community in general and the AI community in particular with a problem and
an opportunity.  The 2060 has become the standard time-sharing system for
computer science research, and this has greatly helped exchange of
programs, especially compilers.  This has been especially important
recently because of the experimentation with new languages and new
variants of old ones.  The prospect is that those organizations needing
new time-sharing systems will often go in a variety of directions, the
results will be unsatisfactory and much of the present possibilities for
exchange will be lost.  Of course, some people believe new time-sharing
machines will not be required at all, and these need read no further.
	The opportunity is to continue the degree of compatibility that
has been achieved and even increase it. We can try for an improved system
in various ways, and we can ask the manufacturer to provide certain
commonly wanted facilities.

	Because different organizations will have different amounts of
money and different time-scales, full unity cannot realistically be expected.
Moreover, some organizations will find deals with specific manufacturers
tempting, either for financial reasons or in order to influence features
of the design or even because of connections between decision makers and
manufacturers.  However, any unity that is achieved will make future
machines more suited to the needs of the AI and computer science research
communities as well as for student use.  Our community has enough weight
to be influential if we use it.  D.E.C. won big by paying attention while
designing the PDP-6 in 1963 and 1964.  The DEC 20 is still selling 20
years later.
Here is my list of desiderata.  I am prepared to argue for them, but
I will be surprised if we get all of them.

Support large number of users doing large problems using large files.
We still don't really know where all the computer time goes, but there
are indications that many operations take times proportional to some
things that they should not be proportional to.  For example, the
time required to start editing a page of a file may depend on the size
of the file and even on the number of other files the computer has open.
Such problems are suspected on both D.E.C. and IBM computers and probably
exist on others.

Personnel requirements:
Machine is optimized for operation without operators.  D.E.C. 2060s
are often operated that way, but it is not clear that this was an
actual design objective, and many organizations do provide operators.
However, whenever the actual expenses of a computing center is calculated,
this item can dominate the amortization cost of the machine.
Organizations willing to accept a standard mode of operations should
be able to do without full time system programmers.

No small address hack.  Most machines that are likely to be proposed have
adequate address space.

Full duplex.  I put this down, so that IBM wouldn't consider that VM stands
a chance of satisfying the community, but it is better to be more explicit
and say that there are a variety of reasons why no flavor 370 or VM is likely
to win with this community.

Operate out of screen editor.  The full capabilities of a screen editor
are useful in composing commands.  All output should come back in
an editable page so the user can control what remains on his screen
and have access to his output text for composing the next input.

Any exec commands executable from a terminal can be done from file
or other source of a stream of characters.  It is also necessary
that programs be able to send input to the operating system.

Manufacturer provides IP/TCP and ARPA net support

Manufacturer provides Common Lisp.  Others will doubtless want Pascal, C,
and Prolog and maybe even Ada.

Manufacturer provides multi-processor support and puts it in Common Lisp
I prefer queue based multi-processing.

Range of compatible machines--down to microprocessor when possible.

Virtual machine facility.  Basing the whole time-sharing systems on
virtual machines down to the level of card equipment has proved losing.
A machine wide file naming system where programs can refer to any
file is required.  However, a virtual machine facility that permits
debugging operating system changes while the operating system is running
would be a virtue - though probably not a decisive virtue.

The editor, the displays, and keyboards (as well as possible) support
arbitrary character sets.

Manufacturer provided versions of major document compilers, i.e.
TEX and SCRIBE.
IBM ACIS (from Branscomb)

S. M. Elder
Director of Development
Academic Information Systems
1241 East Main Street
Stamford, CT 06904
(203) 359-7430

S. A. Carns
Director of Marketing
(as above)