Xcon
Encyclopedia
The R1 program was a production-rule-based system written in OPS5
by John P. McDermott of CMU
in 1978 to assist in the ordering of DEC
's VAX
computer systems by automatically selecting the computer system components based on the customer's requirements. The development of XCON followed two previous unsuccessful efforts to write an expert system for this task, in FORTRAN
and BASIC
).
XCON first went into use in 1980 in DEC's plant in Salem, New Hampshire
. It eventually had about 2500 rules. By 1986, it had processed 80,000 orders, and achieved 95-98% accuracy. It was estimated to be saving DEC $25M a year by reducing the need to give customers free components when technicians made errors, by speeding the assembly process, and by increasing customer satisfaction.
Before XCON, when ordering a VAX from DEC, every cable, connection, and bit of software had to be ordered separately. (Computers and peripherals were not sold complete in boxes as they are today). The sales people were not always very technically expert, so customers would find that they had hardware without the correct cables, printers without the correct drivers, a processor without the correct language chip, and so on. This meant delays and caused a lot of customer dissatisfaction and resultant legal action. XCON interacted with the sales person, asking critical questions before printing out a coherent and workable system specification/order slip.
XCON's success led DEC to rewrite
XCON as XSEL- a version of XCON intended for use by DEC's salesforce to aid a customer in properly configuring their VAX (so they wouldn't, say, choose a computer too large to fit through their doorway or choose too few cabinets for the components to fit in). Location problems and configuration were handled by yet another expert system, XSITE.
McDermott's 1980 paper on R1 won the AAAI
Classic Paper Award in 1999. Legendarily, the name of R1 comes from McDermott, who supposedly said as he was writing it, "Three years ago I wanted to be a knowledge engineer, and today I are one."
OPS5
OPS5 is a rule-based or production system computer language, notable as the first such language to be used in a successful expert system, the R1/XCON system used to configure VAX computers....
by John P. McDermott of CMU
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
in 1978 to assist in the ordering of DEC
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...
's VAX
VAX
VAX was an instruction set architecture developed by Digital Equipment Corporation in the mid-1970s. A 32-bit complex instruction set computer ISA, it was designed to extend or replace DEC's various Programmed Data Processor ISAs...
computer systems by automatically selecting the computer system components based on the customer's requirements. The development of XCON followed two previous unsuccessful efforts to write an expert system for this task, in FORTRAN
Fortran
Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing...
and BASIC
BASIC
BASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use - the name is an acronym from Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code....
).
XCON first went into use in 1980 in DEC's plant in Salem, New Hampshire
Salem, New Hampshire
Salem is a town in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 28,776 at the 2010 census. Salem is a marketing and distributing center north of Boston, with a major amusement attraction, Canobie Lake Park, and a large shopping mall, the Mall at Rockingham Park.- History :The...
. It eventually had about 2500 rules. By 1986, it had processed 80,000 orders, and achieved 95-98% accuracy. It was estimated to be saving DEC $25M a year by reducing the need to give customers free components when technicians made errors, by speeding the assembly process, and by increasing customer satisfaction.
Before XCON, when ordering a VAX from DEC, every cable, connection, and bit of software had to be ordered separately. (Computers and peripherals were not sold complete in boxes as they are today). The sales people were not always very technically expert, so customers would find that they had hardware without the correct cables, printers without the correct drivers, a processor without the correct language chip, and so on. This meant delays and caused a lot of customer dissatisfaction and resultant legal action. XCON interacted with the sales person, asking critical questions before printing out a coherent and workable system specification/order slip.
XCON's success led DEC to rewrite
Rewrite (programming)
A rewrite in computer programming is the act or result of re-implementing a large portion of existing functionality without re-use of its source code. When the rewrite is not using existing code at all, it is common to speak of a rewrite from scratch...
XCON as XSEL- a version of XCON intended for use by DEC's salesforce to aid a customer in properly configuring their VAX (so they wouldn't, say, choose a computer too large to fit through their doorway or choose too few cabinets for the components to fit in). Location problems and configuration were handled by yet another expert system, XSITE.
McDermott's 1980 paper on R1 won the AAAI
American Association for Artificial Intelligence
The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence or AAAI is an international, nonprofit, scientific society devoted to advancing the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying thought and intelligent behavior and their embodiment in machines...
Classic Paper Award in 1999. Legendarily, the name of R1 comes from McDermott, who supposedly said as he was writing it, "Three years ago I wanted to be a knowledge engineer, and today I are one."