Ricoh, ICC Put Expert System on a Chip and a Board
 
Microbytes Daily News Service
Copyright (c) 1989, McGraw-Hill, Inc.
Developing expert systems has up to now often required
sophisticated and expensive software and high-end workstations.
But a joint venture between Ricoh Limited of Tokyo and US-based
International Chip Corporation has developed a new chip that
integrates an inferencing engine, the heart of an expert system,
into a single package. Dubbed the REX (for Resident EXpert),
Ricoh is packaging it onto a coprocessor board that fits into a
standard 16-bit expansion slot of an IBM PC AT or compatible.
 
The board is being sold with "Rule Compiler" software, which
gives developers a set of prompts for developing custom expert
systems. Ricoh claims the software that goes along with the REX
board doesn't require a specially trained expert system engineer
for developing custom applications.
 
The REX board stores knowledge as a series of "IF x, THEN y"
statements (or rules, in expert system parlance). The REX chip
directly processes the rules, instead of relying on the more
traditional way of having the computer's CPU convert them into a
numerical format and them process them. The REX board has on-
board memory that can store up to 10,000 customized rules.
 
Ricoh says the REX chip processes up to 1.7 million rules per
second. The company claims the board can process in seconds what
traditional expert system software can take several minutes to
complete.
 
The company expects the REX board (which costs $1500) to be used
in real-time diagnostic and decision-making applications in the
medical, legal, finance, security, insurance, and retailing
industries. Applications can range from the time-critical, such
as monitoring a power plant, to the everyday, such as providing
customized menus to supermarket shoppers.
 
Contact: Ricoh, 5 Dedrick Pl., West Caldwell, NJ 07006,
(201) 882-2000
 
                              --- Stan Miastkowski
 
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