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The article presents the views of Gordon Bell, vice-president of Digital Equipment Corp., on developments in the computer industry and intercomputer communication. In the 1980s, users are expected to recognize a better interface for direct and indirect communication with their computers. Thus, the large computer population will force intercommunication and standardization among machines. The effect of minicomputers on the user population has been highly significant. Nearly all important features that minicomputers have such as floating-point and other data-type operations, paging and segmentation for better memory management and a reasonably large software library. Minicomputers are often connected to larger, more general purpose computers arranged at a higher level and thus, a hierarchy of computers can be created usually corresponding to hierarchies within the human organization. At present, programming languages are fundamentally special purpose and they solve problems within a particular context.

Future systems that combine computers, digital terminals, and communications equipment present design optimization problems that require reconsideration of the traditional functional responsibilities of the respective subsystems. Several "standard" interfaces, by means of which computers and digital terminals connect to the communications systems will be required. When specifying these interfaces, consideration must be given to problems of coordination, synchronization, error control, signaling, stream multiplexing, and switch control, in addition to minimizing the technological interdependence of specific subsystem designs. A focus on some of the problems is obtained in a discussion of a detailed specification for a particular computer-communications system interface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the conference sessions of the Association for Computing Machinery to be held in August 1971. Eight Special Interest Groups have arranged panel sessions. Topics of broad current interest will be explored. Advancements in the technology will be ensued, challenges will be issued, and solutions will be sought. Panelists will discuss the many hard economic and regulatory policy decisions which must be made within the framework of a broad overview of today's capital markets. Reports will be given on work in progress for various subjects areas and age levels, with particular attention paid to the contribution of computing professionals, techniques, or theory. A broad range of computer techniques and social applications will be considered including computer programming, data management, simulation, information retrieval, linguistic analysis, and computing systems design. The tutorial session Digital Communications Technology will cover recent advances in data communications technology. The panelists will discuss the important technical achievements of the last several years and their significance to system providers and users.

This article focuses on the proposed USA Standard, which presents control procedures for the data communication systems. This employs the USA Standard Code (SC) for Information Interchange. It is intended for systems that are controlled through the use of the communication control characters provided in USASCII. Other standards have been adopted or are being developed which prescribe the character structure, bit sequencing, signaling speed, message format, and other parameters vital to the communication of information in a data system. In the development of this standard both historical and present data communication practices were considered. In addition, consideration was given to the requirements for future systems and to the applicable standards being developed internationally. This standard is intended for systems that are controlled through the use of the communication control characters provided in USASCII. This standard specifies a variety of data communication control procedures to meet the needs of data communication links having different configurations or complexity.

A technique for simulating the detailed logic networks of large and active digital systems is described. Essential objectives sought ore improved ease and economy in model generation, economy in execution time and space, and a facility for handling simultaneous activities. The main results obtained are a clear and useful separation of structural and behavioral model description, a reduction of manual tasks in converting Boolean logic into a structural model, the elimination of manual processes in achieving exclusive simulation of activity, an event-scheduling technique which does not deteriorate in economy as the event queue grows in length, and a simulation procedure which deals effectively with any mixture of serial and simultaneous activities. The passage of time is simulated in a precise, quantitative fashion, and systems to be simulated may be combinations of synchronous and asynchronous logic. Certain aspects of the techniques described may be used for the simulation of network structures other than digital networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decomposition of a complex data transmission system into segments and the identification of the terminal configurations employed on each segment appear to offer promise as a powerful tool for permitting and clarifying measurements and comparisons of the performance of like system segments, and for describing the features of systems which are significant to performance measurements. Many problem areas remain, however, for further study. For example, the question of combining the individual performance measures of a multisegment, multi-mode-of-operation system into a meaningful measure of total systems performance appears quite formidable. It is the intent of the Task Group to approach these problems of performance measurement gradually and to resolve them first for the simpler systems before proceeding to complex system configurations. Although the techniques which this Task Group has evolved for system description may appear to be voluminous or even redundant when applied to very simple configurations, they are orderly, and every effort has been made to seek and exploit the "common denominators" of data transmission systems having arbitrary degrees of complexity. We doubt that much further compaction can be realized without, severely curtailing or destroying the generality and (hopefully) universal applicability of these methods. The format which has been described is admittedly incomplete. It is suggestive rather than exhaustive. It is believed that its chief virtue lies in the identification of an orderly succession of levels of abstraction which permits the regular decomposition of highly complex systems into functional subgroupings having a size structure within the span of human attention. The details of description outlined within these subgroupings require further study and elucidation and it will probably always be necessary for the system describer Io employ good judgment and imagination in extending the scope of description in those areas where new advances, unique applications and/or common sense so dictate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the proposed USA Standard for synchronous signaling rates for data transmission. This proposed USA Standard provides information on the transfer of data between data processing equipment and data communications equipments, which transmit the data over media commonly referred to as voice band. Subsequent standards will prescribe signaling rates for use at greater than voice bandwidth. The rates prescribed herein include the serial speeds in USA Standard X3.1-1902 and the parallel speeds in USA Standard X3.13-1966. This standard therefore replaces both of these previous USA Standards on Signaling Speeds. Future standards will be issued to define additional electrical parameters, which are vital to the interconnection and the transfer of data between the data processing equipment and the communication equipment. This standard provides a group of specific signaling rates for synchronous serial or parallel binary data transmission. These rates exist on the received data and transmitted data circuits of the interface between data terminal equipment and data communications equipment, which operate over nominal 4kHz voice bandwidth channels.

The article presents information on the proposed American Standard for digital data transmission speeds, developed by the Subcommittee of the American Standards Association Sectional Committee X3. It defines the standard signaling speeds used for equipments designed to operate with up to 8 parallel data bits per character. These speeds are applicable on the received data and transmitted data circuits at the interface between data processing terminal equipment and data communications equipment. It suggests that the establishment of specific speeds ensures the compatibility between communication channels and data terminal equipments of data communication systems.

Presents the author's comments on data communication problem. Information that a computer specialist a step or two away from the computer, communications juncture can add a new term to his vocabulary, microwave, because the microwave radio technique is shaping up as the next controversial method for transmitting computer information; Report that the seed for the microwave controversy was planted when Federal Communication Commission (FCC) eased its rules on the eligibility of non-common carriers for microwave authorization; Focus on the plan of Microwave Communications Inc.; Description of the FCC's eventual decision on MCI's application.