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IP: Lets look again -- Information Systems Engineering
From: Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>
Date: Tue, 09 Jan 1996 15:13:49 -0500
Every few years I take out this paper I wrotte in 1985 and see if it is still current and has things gotten better. Sad to say not very much better. You might enjoy re-reading this (for old IPers) and reading it for the new IPers. Dave (on shipboard nearing Stockholm enroute from Helsinki) Information Systems Engineering Perspectives David J. Farber The Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Telecommunication Systems University of Pennsylvania Department of Computer and Information Science Philadelphia, Pa 19104-6389 Phone: (215) 898-9508 Internet: farber () cis upenn edu 15 July 1985 Abstract This document presents an overview of the state of the information systems engineering research area. It is found that the situation in the academic world is far from ideal. A number of areas of research where the nation and the field could benefit from increased attention are discussed; and equally importantly, a set of needs is highlighted, which, if satisfied, would increase the productivity of the academic researcher. Finally, a set of recommendations will be made for specific activities that could lead to the creation of a new generation of information systems engineers. Prepared for the Policy Research and Analysis Section of the NSF, and presented at the Internal Workshop on opportunities for Engineering Research Focused on Emerging Engineering Systems July 1985. Introduction This report will examine the future directions for information systems engineering at the National Science Foundation. It will address the current status of the field, its current problems, its importance to the nation, and potential directions for enhancing the impact of the NSF in this area. In addition, it will examine a set of alternative scenarios that the NSF could follow and the impact of each on the future of the field. Finally, it will propose several potential areas for research concentration that could have high payoff for the nation. Background There have been many studies of the information sciences and technology areas done over the past several years. Perhaps the most comprehensive of these studies was one done in 1984 by the Office of Technology Assessment, Congress of the United States, entitled Information Technology R & D: Critical Trends and Issues. A copy of the summary document has been attached to this report as Appendix A. It would be appropriate to examine the principle findings of this report (printed in italics) and comment on each. Principle Findings of the OTA Report Most areas of information technology examined in this study, including microelectronics, fiber optics, artificial intelligence, computer design, and software engineering, are still in the early states as technologies. In particular, in the software engineering area, I and others have pointed out the lack of coupling of university research activities to the commercial environment, where large software systems are written. Later on in this document, I will specifically comment about this and other lapses of technology transfer. By most measures, U. S. research and development in information technology is strong and viable; however, those traditional measures may not be realistic guides to the future needs of the United States for R & D in these areas. In response to these new pressures (foreign competition and profit motivations), industrial support is growing rapidly for short term applied research and development work, both within industrial labs and through support of university work. While industry has traditionally looked to the academic world for basic research support in many other areas of science, it has over the past decade ceased to expect such in the information systems engineering area. Many of the joint academic-industrial programs have resulted in the university becoming a development shop for industrial researchers. In addition, the quality and quantity of academics who can work with and understand the industrial sector has decreased in this field due to the large number of entrepreneurial start-ups motivated and manned by ex-academics. We are finding faculty positions in academia increasingly filled by people who have inadequate experience to understand, react, and deal with the real problems of industrial research and advanced development. Universities, traditionally viewed as centers for basic research, are re-examining their roles with respect to applied research and are forming new types of relationships with industry and government. The OTA report states that it is too early to say whether or not this will have a negative or positive response on university. It is my opinion that this has already been shown to have a negative effect on the underlying academic role of the university. What has happened in a large number of cases is that the institutions that have been formed are decoupled from the university, thus exacerbating the isolation of the teaching program and graduate research from the institutional activities. The University has effectively created a corporation for doing external research which is indistinguishable from a separate R & D entity, usually without gaining the full benefits accruable from such. This has created the phenomena of faculty who never teach and have minimal contact with undergraduates and even with students, because they spend a majority of their time in these institutes. I strongly question the advisability of encouraging such directions. The Department of Defense is the predominant source of federal support of information technologies research and development, providing nearly 80% of the funding. Experience has shown that the spillover from these activities to the civilian industrial sector is minimal in the information systems area because the cost effectiveness criteria for military research and development is totally different from that in the commercial sector. There are, of course, counterexamples, such as ARPANET. However, many senior industrial managers believe that such examples of significant spillover are few and far between, as witnessed by their reluctance to get involved in some DOD activities, such as the very high speed integrated circuit work. There are examples within U.S. industry where major corporations refuse to undertake DOD research or have isolated this work into separate subsidiaries. Experience has shown that the technology transfer from these subsidiaries to the mainline commercial areas is essentially nonexistent. Both the OTA and I strongly believe that increased funding for long-term research in information systems and technology is needed from non-defense agencies in order to focus research on areas that will have more civilian payoff. There is substantial concern that technical and scientific information flows between the U. S. and other countries are unbalanced outward. These concerns have recently surfaced in the form of the new Department of Commerce Export Control Laws. A tight interpretation of these rules would cause a severe decrease in the quantity of graduate students available in the information systems area, since many of these students come from abroad. Additionally, the decrease in freedom to publish may have a severe impact on our ability to communicate with our peers, even within the United States. While I do not advocate a completely open information flow, it must be realized that such constraints will have a particularly acute impact on the field of information systems engineering. Instruments for scientific research are growing more sophisticated and are becoming obsolete at an increasingly rapid pace. This is particularly apparent in the area of information systems engineering. The computers used as research tools become obsolete at a rapid rate. Such obsolesence especially causes problems in this field, since research often relies on advanced hardware and advanced communications facilities. Outdated equipment puts the academic researcher in a disadvantageous position relative to his industrial research colleague. This disadvantage accelerates the departure from the academic world of the talent that is necessary to both properly train the next generation of students and to insure that active, relevant research is maintained in the academic community. An area where the lack of adequate equipment is particularly severe is in the computer architecture and computer communications disciplines (as well as, of course, in microelectronics). In these cases, academic researchers who are trying to investigate new computer organizations or new communications systems are definitely handicapped by the lack of modern fabrication facilities, of state of the art CAD systems, and of the support staffs which are norms in equivalent industrial laboratories. Efforts on the part of non-DOD funding agencies to attack the equipment problem in information systems engineering have been minimal as are current efforts to allow the academies effective access to industrial facilities. Policies designed to stimulate information technology R & D need to be evaluated for possible significant tradeoffs and external costs in other areas. What is the State of Information Systems Engineering Research? Advanced Computer Architecture While we have been through what appears to the public to have been several revolutions in computer architecture, little has been done at the fundamental organization level. The architecture that are now in use in the commercial world, with several notable exceptions, were designed over 15 years ago. Even our technological star, the microcomputer, has an internal organization which has not fundamentally changed over the past decade. There are many reasons for this phenomena; some are commercial in the sense that new and innovative designs have been very hard to sell in the commercial marketplace (-for example, the Intel iAPX 432). Safe, well-understood designs which are upwardly compatible with past generation computers have tended to be the norm. While such conservatism is not in and of itself bad, it does have a dampening impact on the innovation that one can expect from the commercial field. Innovative architectures is an area where the university, with its studied indifference to commercial viability can have a major impact. One can argue that the RISC architecture re-spawned from the university environment has become the basis for several new and innovative microprocessors (there are also opinions that RISC is just a transient reaction to technological tradeoffs). Nevertheless, the question of how such innovation can be encouraged and harnessed is one of the most difficult issues facing the planners in our national research supporting agencies. I believe that it is critical to support the academic engineering research community in the computer architecture area. Such support must lead to the creation of an infrastructure which will allow researchers to try their ideas and to create new designs in a reasonable amount of time. A path towards attaining this capability could be modeled on the solution to a similar problem that the NSF faced 20 years ago with the advent of computers as a research tool. At that time, the NSF undertook a program of hardware capability grants to the universities on a massive scale to to seed the computer science programs that were forming at that time. A similar program, centered about providing state-of-the-art CAD tools, wide spread access to silicon foundries on a rapid turn-around basis, and modern architecture verification and simulation tools running on state-of-the-art engineering workstations would have a profound impact on the ability of researchers to operate in the university environment. I strongly recommend that a major initiative be undertaken to supply to university departments in the information systems engineering area, state-of-the-art CAD facilities and widespread access to fast-turnaround fabrication facilities. These fabrication facilities should include both board-level and microchip-level capabilities. In addition, a mechanism must be found to fund adequate technical support staffs so that the maximum productivity can be achieved by researchers. Software Engineering The field of software engineering has received a significant amount of attention over the past 5 to 10 years as the balance of effort and cost in the development of new systems shifted primarily to software development. Many computer companies (especially microcomputer companies) have found, much to their horror, that their software staffs are 2 to 3 times larger than their hardware staffs. Very large, defense-oriented software activities have pointed out the sorry state of our knowledge of how to write large software systems. The ability to create relatively free bug software at a tolerable cost has become perhaps the deciding factor in the battle for dominance of the computer industry. It is one of the areas where the United States has shown itself to be traditionally stronger than our foreign competitors, but is again under attack by Japan and Europe. It goes without saying (however, I will say it), that the feasibility of large weapon systems, such as SDI, depends on strong software engineering technology. Likewise, the widespread success of large, distributed applications, such as a fund-transfer systems, automated factory systems, real-time control systems, etc., depends on low-cost, high-reliability software systems. To date, much software engineering research has centered on the theoretical aspects of software. While such studies may provide the basis for long-term payoffs, they have yielded little insight that can be used in the short run by practicing software designers. We have not yet achieved the fundamental breakthroughs that will be necessary to achieve real success in this field. In the meantime, the commercial field is suffering from excessively expensive, ever more fragile software systems. Perhaps a major reason for this lack of short-term benefits for the field lies in the lack of exposure of academic researchers to large-scale software development. Those who do develop skills in this area leave academia to form private companies. The problem of how to involve academics in large-scale activities so that they might learn the problems, and thus contribute the solutions, appears insurmountable. The only path that seems at all viable lies with industrial/academic collaboration at a level which has not yet been practical. It would involve a close liason between the researchers and ongoing industrial software development groups. Some Common Problems If one looks at the computer architecture and the software production areas, one sees a number of common problems. The most fundamental problem seems to be the management of complexity. For example, recently a microcomputer design by a key U. S. company had to be dramatically downgraded, not because of technological problems of chip size, line widths, or similar problems, but because the design had become so large that the designers were not able to control it. These chip designers found themselves in essentially the same position that many software groups have found themselves in, namely that things had gotten too complicated, and too large for the management and design tools that were available (and these designers are reputed to have had some of the most sophisticated tools around). I feel that there are possible research paths that can provide payoff in the management of complexity and thus improve the future ability of the nation to maintain its leadership. Such paths are most likely similar to those that the SDI effort must also develop, but again, without a distinct activity targeted at the civilian sector, our commercial field will most likely not benefit from the SDI's advances. It is suggested that the Foundation look seriously at a research program which, for lack of a better term, I will call ``complex systems engineering.'' One of the functions of this program would be to help understand and develop tools for the management of complex systems development. It will have other, perhaps equally important roles, which I will touch on shortly. Scaling In the academic community, we tend to deal with small problems which are neatly packaged into three-year Ph.D. topics or two-year NSF grant durations, or, worse yet, three-year tenure decision times. Many of the real problems in software or hardware engineering show up only when one tackles large problems. The problem of building a real compiler shows very clearly the issues in this field, (which is not much better than it was 10 years ago). Building a state of the art microcomputer shows the problems of complexity, while building a small prototype circuit does not. A major challenge facing the academic research community is how to undertake research which can help understand the management of complex technical systems development. Since by the nature of the university, long-term and large tasks are unattractive, some mechanism must be evolved to expose academics and students to and involve them in such tasks. The Convergence of Computers and Communications Attached as Appendix B is a reprint of a paper, written some eight years ago (``The Convergence of Computing and Telecommunications Systems,'' by David Farber and Paul Baran, Science, 18 March 1977). It explores the convergence of computer technology and communications technology and points out that future systems will, and must blend together these technologies if such systems are to be competitive. In the eight years since this paper was published, the argument has become even stronger. The advent of local computer networks in the university and government arenas has brought into day-by-day focus this synthesis. At the same time, the evolution and transition of technology, such as the DOD networking; from a research tool to a commercially viable and necessary technology has further strengthened the argument. The commercial importance of this work can be shown quite dramatically by the movements in the international arena toward standards in the store-and-forward data communications area. In the early 70's, the academic research community was a leader in the definition and creation of local area network technologies. As is proper, the leadership in this area has now passed to the commercial area as the economic importance of the technologies became obvious. In the main, the continuing contribution from the academic world has centered on network modeling and measurement techniques. It is the belief of leaders in this field that the advent of fiber optic technology as a viable transmission medium offers the opportunity for a resurgence of fundamental research in local networking. The ability to have bandwidths that approach those attained on multiprocessor system buses offers the possibility of a new view of distributed systems. Research activities being undertaken on a small scale, such as MEMNET at the University of Delaware, are attempting to optimize the efficiency of the network/processor interface by making them more `natural.' Research towards a better understanding of the switching of very high speed communication facilities is an area that also requires fundamental understanding (for example, how does one passively switch fiber links?). The potential for very high speed, yet relatively high latency, transmission facilities, such as fibers, calls for increased research to better understand communications protocols and how they can be created or adapted to perform better in this environment. There has been some work to date in this area, dealing primarily with satellite communications. However, I feel that the problems which arise in local, ground-based systems may require substantially different solutions due to the extremely high bandwidths involved and to the uses of these facilities (for example, processor/peripheral and processor/processor interconnections). Research involving such high speed media calls for not only encouraging the development of the appropriate talents within the academic community, but also for making available state-of-the-art transmission facilities and test equipment to academic researchers. Also, the very high speeds attained by these systems makes the fabrication of interfaces inherently dependent on the use of very high speed logic circuits, with all their attendant design difficulties. On a broader scale, when one looks in the academic community for people with the depth of experience and knowledge of the communications world necessary to do systems engineering synthesis, one finds a startling shortage of people. Such shortages are not unique to academia; there is a major and severe lack of qualified researchers and developers in the telecommunications industry as well. This lack portends critical problems for an industry which needs to create systems that blends communications and computing. Actions to rectify this shortage should be given the highest priority and attention on the part of NSF. The future holds both technological and application imperatives which will further the symbiotic relationship of computing and communications. Technologies such as fiber optics offer data bandwidths which approach those of the internal bus on modern midscale computers. The adoption of standards such as the ISDN portend an integrated service offering from the data communications carriers. The health of the computer community within the United States may depend, in large measure, by on ability to react with foresight and imagination to the potentials of these technologies. While the United States research community is still a leader in research in distributed processing and in local networking, foreign suppliers are rapidly becoming leaders in the application of this technology to the marketplace. The future stimulation of university research in these areas will depend in very large measure on the availability of substantial hardware commitments so that they may have an environment in which to perform their research. Trying to understand the impact of fiber optics on distributed processing systems while being forced to utilize low bandwidth local networks is a frustrating and non-productive enterprise. In addition, there are new areas of research activity that are motivated by the computer-communications synthesis; for example, the problem of privacy and protection of information in a distributed computer-based office environment may be critical to the commercial viability of this important and large target area. Yet, if one looks within the academic community for research activities, both technical and social, that deal with this area, one finds very, very few. The reasons for this are complex and relate both to the ``military'' image of research in trusted systems and to a lack of systems oriented research groups within the academic community. What Can Be Done? In the early part of this document, I suggested some specific actions that could be undertaken and alluded to paths that could be used to stimulate research in the information systems engineering areas. The question remains of how to tie this disparate suggestions together into a program that could motivate important research to complement that being done in industrial laboratories. I propose that it would be valuable to stimulate a real, traditional systems engineering perspective to guide and motivate university research in the information systems areas. The traditional role of systems engineering is to provide a synthesis of fundamental research, market needs, and technological feasibility to create new products and new understanding of a field. Systems engineering studies traditionally have had a longer term payoff than the short, advanced, development type of research activities. These studies also provide a training ground for the development of personnel who have an appreciation for all aspects of the engineering profession. In the case of the information systems engineering field, this broad, high-level view is critical to the evolution of the complex systems we have been discussing. A systems engineering activity can not, however, exist in a vacuum. In the industrial world, it is motivated by products. In the military world, it is motivated by broad initiatives, such as SDI. The academic world, also, must be motivated by a goal. To provide such a goal, I am proposing that the National Science Foundation formulate a project which can be used as a vehicle for hosting both the systems engineering studies as well as the resulting research activities. Such a project must integrate communications, computing, software engineering, human interface design, and information privacy. Further, it must result in improvements in university information systems design and fabrication facilities, as well as yielding insights into the management of complexity. A project which fits these goals would be the development of a advanced national network. This network would be based on the most modern transmission technology including, but not limited to, fiber optics and satellite links. It would interconnect every engineering researcher in the United States. The network project would provide these researchers with advanced Engineering Workstations, high speed multimedia communications both within and without their campuses, and access to the information and data bases that they need in order to carry out their day-by-day activities. Further, it would provide an appropriate level of information privacy protection for all network users. The engineering workstation would be an excellent vehicle for the exploration of human interfaces symbolic algebra, and expert systems technology when applied to a technical environment, as well as providing a test bed for the most advanced notions in microprocessor architecture. The definition, design, modeling, construction and performance measurement of such a system would focus the attention of the information systems engineering research community on: 1) system level problems 2) a complex design which will require the development of tools for dealing with this complexity, 3) a training ground for future researchers, and 4) a set of understandings and an environment which would greatly enhance their productivity as researchers. Additionally, the fallout of such an activity into the industrial sector in the form of new product ideas, new ways of using communications, new man-machine interfaces, etc., would have a stimulating and valuable impact on the national scene and on our international competitiveness. It would also have the potential for producing major improvements in the productivity and quality of life for the academic researcher. It should be emphasized that this project is designed to develop and mature fundamental research in the areas covered. It is not intended to just be another facility; thus, it is important that it be managed as a research project, drawing together the best people that the industrial and academic research communities can offer. We expect that the technology developed within this activity will be pioneering, and not just another case of rehashed, 10-year old ideas. There are models of similar projects in Japan and in the United Kingdom. In all these cases, the activities have had a stimulating widespread effect on the research capabilities of the countries, as well as having provided a motivation for effective joint academic/industrial collaboration. The Alternatives If we continue at our current level of activity in the information systems engineering areas, we will become more and more a customer country for advanced technical products. We already see in Japan and in Europe strong indications that this will happen. Further, the academic community's capability to train people in information systems technology will continue to decline as faculty who are interested in systems-level issues leave for industry. Our faculty will become more and more comprised of people who are not interested in doing, but just theorizing. Our future computer engineers will not be well-trained by exclusively theoreticians. Small additions in funding will probably have minor impact on the situation we have talked about. In order to provide the stimulus for a major push in the academic community, a significant amount of money must be targeted into a real, concrete initiative which can fire the imagination and creativity of our scientists and engineers. It is my view that the atmosphere in Congress is receptive to such initiatives and that, ongoing NSF-sponsored activities can provide some, but not all, of the infrastructure and additional motivation for such an effort. Acknowledgement I would like to acknowledge the authors of the two attachments for their contribution to my thinking processes, as well to Gary Delp, Peter von Glahn, and Manny Farber for their useful insights and help.
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