Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site cornell.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!houxm!houxz!vax135!cornell!rej From: rej@cornell.UUCP Newsgroups: net.lang.st80 Subject: A real Smalltalk product announcement Message-ID: <175@cornell.UUCP> Date: Wed, 8-Aug-84 21:11:15 EDT Article-I.D.: cornell.175 Posted: Wed Aug 8 21:11:15 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 9-Aug-84 04:52:10 EDT Sender: rej@cornell.UUCP Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept. Lines: 39 From: rej (Ralph Johnson) The following announcement was taken from the August 6'th edition of Electronics Week, and was probably taken from a Tektronix advertising blurb. Is this the "Magnolia" that I have heard mentioned? A $14,950 computer that runs the Smalltalk-80 programming language marks Tektronix' entrance into the artificial intelligence market. To hit the market early next year, the 4404 Artificial Intelligence System is designed to increase productivity in many areas of AI research and development, including expert systems, natural languages intelligent robotics, vision systems, automatic programming, and theorem proving. The standard 4404 is a desktop system built around a 10-Mz 68010 processor with no wait states. A hardware accelertor supports floating-point opertions. The 1 megabyte of random-access memory provided can be doubled. Page-on-demand memory management provides a large, 8-megabyte virtual memory address space tht permits users to develop complex programs without segmentation or overlays. The mass storage system consists of a 20-megabyte Winchester disk drive, a 5 1/4 floppy disk drive, and an optional streaming tape drive. The 4404's monochorme bit-mapped graphics display is refreshed at a 60-Hz rte, noninterlaced. The 640-by-480-pixel display acts a window into the 1,024-by-1,024-pixel display address space. A mouse comes with the system. Optional programming languages - Lisp and Prolog - and networking capabilities will be available next spring. This sounds like it might be a good Smalltalk engine, but I am surprised at the emphasis placed on AI. Do the people at Xerox use Smalltalk to do AI? Do they have a bunch of AI specific tools, or has Tektronix developed them, or is this just usual advertising hype? If the 4404 is really a good AI machine, then one answer to the question of what Smalltalk is good for is obvious. Ralph Johnson