00100	.require "good.pub" source_file;
00200	.LTR Defense Supply Service - Washington
00300	Room 1D-245
00400	The Pentagon
00500	Washington, D. C. 20310
00600	
00700	
00800	Attention:  Mr. Eugene Stubbs, Contracting Officer
00900	
01000	Subject:  Computer Equipment Purchase (SD-183 Capital Equipment)
01100	
01200	
01300	Gentlemen:
01400	.fac
01500	Permission is requested to purchase the components of a  minicomputer
01600	system  in  support of advanced hand-eye research, plus four computer
01700	typewriter  terminals  suitable  for  remote  use.   The   particular
01800	components and costs are as follows:
01900	.begin verbatim
02000	
02100		Item					Quantity   Unit Cost
02200	
02300	    DEC PDP-11/45 with 16K words of core, etc.	    1	     $34,000
02400	
02500	    Intel MOS memory system (3*65K*18 bits, 500ns)  1	      32,000
02600	
02700	    SPS-41 Signal Processor			    1	      30,500
02800	
02900	    Video I/O system				    1	       6,600
03000	
03100	    Interface with PDP-10			    1	       2,000
03200	
03300	    Portable terminals (Texas Inst. 725 or equiv.)  4	       2,895
03400	
03500	.end
03600	The University is financially unable to provide funds from its own
03700	resources to buy this equipment, so we request that contractual funds
03800	be authorized for this purpose.  There are sufficient funds available
03900	under the existing contract (SD-183) to cover this cost.
04000	
04100	Figure 1 shows the configuration of the proposed system, with
04200	existing elements in solid boxes and proposed elements in dashed
04300	boxes.  The major performance objectives of this system are as follows.
04400	
04500	.begin narrow 4,4;
04600	1.  To be able to control two or more mechanical arms operating as
04700	quickly as possible.
04800	
04900	2.  To obtain higher quality digitized images from TV cameras (7 bits
05000	per picture element instead of the present 4).
05100	
05200	3.  To perform image processing with sufficient speed that new classes
05300	of visual operators can be employed practically.
05400	
05500	4.  To demonstrate the feasibility of performing hand-eye functions in
05600	a medium-priced system.
05700	
05800	.end
05900	The data paths between elements are all 16 or 32 bits wide.  System
06000	control can be performed by either the PDP-10 or PDP-11.
06100	
     

00100	.begin group
00200	←Figure 1.  Proposed Hand-eye Subsystem Configuration
00300	.verbatim
00400	
00500		PDP-10
00600		   |
00700	     _ _ _ ∨ _ _ _          _ _ _ _ _ _ _          _____________
00800	    |             |        |             |        |             |
00900	        PDP-10                DEC Core            |     Arm     |
01000	    |  Interface  |        |  (16K*16)   |        |  Controller |
01100	                                                  |             |
01200	    |_ _ _ _ _ _ _|        |_ _ _ _ _ _ _|        |_____________|
01300		   ∧			  ∧			 ∧
01400		   |			  |			 |
01500		   |			  |			 |
01600		   ∨	    Unibus	  ∨			 ∨
01700		    ---------------------------------------------
01800		   ∧			  ∧			 ∧
01900		   |			  |			 |
02000		   |			  |			 |
02100	     _ _ _ ∨ _ _ _          _ _ _ ∨ _ _ _          ______∨______
02200	    |             |        |             |        |             |
02300	          DEC                 Intel MOS           |   SPS-41    |
02400	    |  PDP-11/45  |<------>|    Memory   |<------>| Signal Proc.|
02500	                              (3*65K*16)          |             |
02600	    |_ _ _ _ _ _ _|        |_ _ _ _ _ _ _|        |_____________|
02700					  ∧
02800					  |
02900					  |
03000	     _____________          _ _ _ ∨ _ _ _          _____________
03100	    |             |        |             |        |             |
03200	    |     TV      |             Video             |    Video    |
03300	    |   Cameras   |------->| I/O System  |------->| Synthesizer |
03400	    |             |                               |             |
03500	    |_____________|        |_ _ _ _ _ _ _|        |_____________|
03600								 |
03700								 ∨
03800							    TV Monitors
03900	.end
     

00100	.next page
00200	A primary function of the PDP-11 will be the control of mechanical
00300	arms.  At present this task is performed for one arm by our PDP-6,
00400	operating at about 50% of capacity.  We will soon have two arms going
00500	and are attempting to drive them at even higher speeds, so greater
00600	computational performance is needed.  The PDP-11/45 appears to be
00700	the most economical processor capable of performing this function.
00800	We propose to purchase it with the following options:  16K words of
00900	core memory, floating point processor, programmable real time clock,
01000	and memory management.
01100	
01200	We have chosen to acquire the PDP-11 with a minimum of DEC memory
01300	and to purchase MOS memories separately from Intel.  It appears
01400	that this will provide higher reliablity at substantially lower cost.
01500	The interface to this memory, which we will build, has four ports.
01600	This enables the memory to be used concurrently by the PDP-11 and SPS-41 processors,
01700	and for buffering of TV camera images (in or out).
01800	The amount of memory (3 * 65K * 16 bits) is chosen to be sufficient to
01900	represent one complete television image (6 bits of intensity and 6 bits of
02000	color per element over a 512 * 512 field).
02100	
02200	The SPS-41 signal processor, manufactured by Signal Processing
02300	Systems, Inc. of Waltham, Massachusetts, is a special purpose processor
02400	that is particularly fast at processing data arrays.  We plan to use it for digital
02500	image processing.  We have done comparative timing studies of the
02600	PDP-10 and SPS-41 for a number of processes of interest.  Table 1
02700	shows some of the main results.  As can be seen, the SPS-41 is
02800	a great deal faster than the PDP-10 for these processes.
02900	The expected benefits include a major speed-up in existing vision operators,
03000	and, more important, making possible the use of new classes of operations
03100	that are impractically slow with existing facilities.
03200	.begin verbatim
03300	
03400	                     Table 1.  Speed Comparisons
03500	               (All calculations based on 1024 points)
03550	
03600	          Process			PDP-10	SPS-41	Speedup
03700		      						Factor
03800	
03900	      Spatial filtering			 60 ms	 3 ms	  20
04000	
04100	      Random access correlation		 30	 0.5	  60
04200	
04300	      2-D coordinate transformation	 60	 1.0	  60
04400	
04500	      Fast fourier transform		700	 7.6	  92
04600	
04700	.end
04800	
04900	The video I/O system will employ a new analog-digital converter
05000	(Model 5810 of Computer Labs., Inc., Greensboro, N. C., or equivalent).
05100	This will permit images to be digitized with 7 bit resolution at
05200	sampling rates up to 10 MHz.  This is substantially better than the
05300	present system, in use since 1966, which is limited to 4 bits per sample
05400	at a 7 MHz sample rate.  The higher rate is made possible by the
05500	higher effective bandwidth of the MOS memories.
05600	
05700	We expect to construct an interface with the existing PDP-10 system
05800	that will permit memory-to memory transfers.  This will be a rather
05900	inexpensive item (under $2,000).
06000	
06100	The portable terminals are needed for computer access from remote offices
06200	homes, etc.  Our laboratory owns no such terminals at present, although
06300	we recently began renting a few.  It appears that there is a long-term
06400	requirement for such devices that would most economically be met with
06500	a purchase.
06600	
06700	By a copy of this letter, I am requesting Mr. Jack Ducey of ONR to check
06800	on availability using the enclosed forms DD1419.
06900	
07000	.lde
07050	.begin verbatim
07100	
07200	cc:  J. Ducey, ONR (with forms DD1419)
07300	     A. Blue, S. Crocker, L. Roberts, DARPA
07400	.end