Microprocessors in the United Kingdom: the State of the art, 1978

Abstract Any survey is necessarily subjective, and one reviewing the state of the art in as fast developing a subject as microprocessors is likely to be more so than most. As it it is not possible to review all, or even a majority of projects, except at a trivial level, the author has instead decided to concentrate on two particular fields of microprocessor-based research and development with which he is familiar, and to review these in reasonable detail. The two fields chosen are firstly distributed microprocessor systems and secondly medical applications of microprocessors. So far as subjectivity is concerned, the author's viewpoint of the subject stems from within the academic establishment, and so this report may over-emphasise on-going research activities and be under-representative of industrial activities. The first section of this report gives brief notes about two recent government initiatives related to microprocessors whilst the remainder of the report deals first with distributed systems and then with medical applications.