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Fifth Generation Computer Systems

The Fifth Generation Computer Systems (FGCS; Japanese: 第五世代コンピュータ, romanizeddaigosedai konpyūta) was a 10-year initiative begun in 1982 by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) to create computers using massively parallel computing and logic programming. It aimed to create an "epoch-making computer" with supercomputer-like performance and to provide a platform for future developments in artificial intelligence. FGCS was ahead of its time, and its excessive ambitions led to commercial failure. However, on a theoretical level, the project spurred the development of concurrent logic programming.

Not to be confused with the fifth-generation computer project Kronos.

The term "fifth generation" was intended to convey the system as being advanced. In the history of computing hardware, there were four "generations" of computers. Computers using vacuum tubes were called the first generation; transistors and diodes, the second; integrated circuits, the third; and those using microprocessors, the fourth. Whereas previous computer generations had focused on increasing the number of logic elements in a single CPU, the fifth generation, it was widely believed at the time, would instead turn to massive numbers of CPUs to gain performance.

Inference computer technologies for knowledge processing

Computer technologies to process large-scale data bases and

knowledge bases

High-performance workstations

Distributed functional computer technologies

Super-computers for scientific calculation

In the late 1960s until the early 1970s, there was much talk about "generations" of computer hardware, then usually organized into three generations.


Omitted from this taxonomy is the "zeroth-generation" computer based on metal gears (such as the IBM 407) or mechanical relays (such as the Mark I), and the post-third-generation computers based on Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) circuits.


There was also a parallel set of generations for software:


Throughout these multiple generations up to the 1970s, Japan built computers following U.S. and British leads. In the mid-1970s, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry stopped following western leads and started looking into the future of computing on a small scale. They asked the Japan Information Processing Development Center (JIPDEC) to indicate a number of future directions, and in 1979 offered a three-year contract to carry out more in-depth studies along with industry and academia. It was during this period that the term "fifth-generation computer" started to be used.


Prior to the 1970s, MITI guidance had successes such as an improved steel industry, the creation of the oil supertanker, the automotive industry, consumer electronics, and computer memory. MITI decided that the future was going to be information technology. However, the Japanese language, particularly in its written form, presented and still presents obstacles for computers.[2] As a result of these hurdles, MITI held a conference to seek assistance from experts.


The primary fields for investigation from this initial project were:

The use of logic to express information in a computer.

The use of logic to present problems to a computer.

The use of logical inference to solve these problems.