A Couple of Book Reviews Copyright 1989 David W. Batterson "MS-DOS Beyond 640K - Working With Extended Memory and Expanded Memory" by James Forney; Windcrest Books, 1989, 235 pp., $19.95 "The Fifth Generation - The Future of Computer Technology" by Jeffrey Hsu and Joseph Kusnan; Windcrest Books, 1989, 187 pp., $16.95 It was interesting to read these two books around the same time. PC Magazine contributor James Forney's book on extended and expanded memory deals with how to increase RAM usage while stuck with the outmoded technology of the third generation PCs most of us now use (PCs, ATs, 386s). Then I read Hsu's and Kusnan's wide-ranging survey of what's going on (and what will soon follow) in fifth generation machines. That book makes thinking about adding memory cards to ATs kind of archaic and inadequate. Let's start with current computers, however. It is a necessity to increase usable RAM to avoid the modern bugaboo of "RAM-cram." With CAD and desktop publishing software, TSR programs, heavyweight spreadsheet usage, and multitasking, we've had to jump past the old 640K limit. You might want to skip over some of Forney's book content , especially if you aren't a techie. There is more about addresses, address pins, clock ticks, and mapping registers than you may want to know. But the information will be quite informative to others. What the author basically does is tell what engineers and programmers have done in the ongoing RAM evolution. He includes LIM EMS (Lotus/Intel/Microsoft Expanded Memory Specification) 4.0, DESQview, Software Carousel, SIMMs (Single Inline Memory Modules), multitasking (Windows), XENIX, memory cards (AboveBoard Plus), disk caching, RAM disks, and DOS extenders (like PC-MOS/386, Concurrent DOS, & DR DOS). If you want to clear up the confusion over extended and expanded memory, and learn all about each, Forney's book should do it. --- In their book, computer consultants Jeffrey Hsu and Joseph Kusnan look way beyond MS-DOS machines to the wave of the future: the fifth generation. Fifth generation computers embrace a number of technological advances, including parallel processing, new chip technology, speech processing, robotics, advanced programming languages, expert systems, artificial intelligence (AI), natural language, and vision systems. We are racing against (or working with, depending on how you look at it) Japan's "Big Six" companies, Britain, and the European Community to see who can set the fifth generation computing standards for the future. The importance of this outcome cannot be overstated. The widely-touted Cray-2 computers are already obsolete--in fifth generation terms. The Connection Machine, a parallel processing computer, has reached speeds of 7 BIPS (Billion Instructions Per Second). But the speeds must (and will) be much higher as technology advances. The authors explain just how far we've come since the 70s--when serious research started to take off--and what direction we are headed in. The advances already made are quite astounding. They look at "four-dimensional hypercube architecture," VLSI (Very Large Scale Integrated) processors, and the HEMT (High-Electron-Mobility-Transistor), made with gallium arsenide. Other new developments are ballistic transistors, electron beam photolithography, wafer-scale integration, and optical computers. But wait, there's more. How about the optical transistor, called the transphasor, the SEED (Self Electro-Optic Effect Device), and faster Josephson junctions? To me, the molecular chip seems the most fascinating, since "a single molecular computer can have more than a MILLION BILLION times the memory of supercomputers today, but be as large as a sugar cube." Photochromic molecular disk drives are already headed toward commercial production. They will make CD-ROM drives look like a Walkman! When you add advances in vision and speech recognition, you realize that some amazing things are happening. Don't forget programming languages either, which are evolving to keep up with the hardware. There's Smalltalk-80, PLANNER, PROLOG, and OPS5, for just a few examples. A natural language taking hold is Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), developed at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), which also developed Smalltalk-80. All in all, this is fascinating stuff. But by the way computer technology is accelerating, their information may be old in another year! Windcrest Books are published by TAB BOOKS Inc., Blue Ridge Summit, PA 17294-0850; 800-822-8138; 717-794-2191; fax: 717-794-2080. # David Batterson writes for various computer publications. Contact him via MCI Mail: 273-7218.