The Alvey Programme was a
British government
His Majesty's Government, abbreviated to HM Government or otherwise UK Government, is the central government, central executive authority of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. sponsored research programme in
information technology
Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data processing, data and information processing, and storage. Inf ...
that ran from 1984 to 1990. The programme was a reaction to the Japanese
Fifth Generation project, which aimed to create a computer using
massively parallel computing/processing. The programme was not focused on any specific technology such as robotics, but rather supported research in knowledge engineering in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
. It has been likened in operations to the
U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Japan's ICOT.
Background
During the early 1980s, Japan invited the United Kingdom to become a part of the Fifth Generation Project.
In October 1981, a Department of Industry mission to Japan consisting of academics, civil servants and business representatives explored collaboration opportunities and attended the Fifth Generation conference.
Informed by negotiations between ICL and Fujitsu conducted to "ensure the survival of ICL", suggesting that collaboration would only be possible in "very specific areas agreed upon by individual companies", it was concluded that an emulation of the Japanese approach would be preferable to any attempt at participating in the Japanese programme.
In response, a committee was created and was chaired by John Alvey, a technology director at
British Telecom
BT Group plc (formerly British Telecom) is a British Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-li ...
. The report generated proposed a different course of action to the Japanese initiative and became the basis for the UK's rejection of the Fifth Generation and the creation of its own Alvey Programme. The programme's fundamental goal was the improvement of the advanced information technology in the UK to address the declining performance of this sector.
It operated in 1984 until 1990.
Alvey was not involved in the programme itself.
The main focus areas of the Alvey Programme were as follows:
* Advanced Microelectronics and
VLSI
*
Intelligent Knowledge Based Systems (IKBS) or
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...
(AI)
*
Software Engineering
Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining Application software, software applications. It involves applying engineering design process, engineering principl ...
*
Man-Machine Interaction (including
Natural Language Processing
Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of computer science and especially artificial intelligence. It is primarily concerned with providing computers with the ability to process data encoded in natural language and is thus closely related ...
)
Alongside these areas, the provision of a communications infrastructure was a component of the programme.
Various areas of endeavour were incorporated into the main focus areas. For example,
systems architecture
A system architecture is the conceptual model that defines the structure, behavior, and view model, views of a system. An architecture description is a formal description and representation of a system, organized in a way that supports reasoning ...
, specifically
parallel processing, featured in the VLSI endeavour.
References
*
Brian Oakley and Kenneth Owen, ''Alvey: Britain's Strategic Computing Initiative'',
MIT Press
The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press publishes a number of academic journals and has been a pioneer in the Open Ac ...
, 1990. {{ISBN, 0-262-15038-7
* Chris Rigatuso, Takeshi Tachi, Dennis Sysvester & Mark Soper
''Collaboration between Firms in Information Technology'' Berkeley, EE 290X Group G.
* Richard Tyler, The Daily Telegraph, Feb 9th 2010
1984 establishments in the United Kingdom
1990 disestablishments in the United Kingdom
History of artificial intelligence
History of computing in the United Kingdom
Research and development in the United Kingdom
Research projects