The KLIC Programming Contest is into its third year, and past experience with it has taught me many things as one of the examiners of the works submitted.
This has been a rare and valuable opportunity for me, and I am honored to be able to serve once again as chairman of the working committee and the screening panel.

The contest is designed to promote the development and application of KLIC, a processing system of the concurrent logic programming language KL1 developed as part of the Fifth Generation Computer Systems (FGCS) Project. It provides an ideal opportunity to test the skills of concurrent programming using KL1.
For this contest, we publicized application procedures in such diverse media as academic papers on information processing, magazines, and home pages including English version on the Internet, hoping to attract many applicants.

Unlike last year, this contest was offered at three levels--the ENTRY category for beginners, the SPEED category for experts familiar with concurrent logic programming, and the IDEA category which places no restrictions on subject matter to encourage free thinking. This arrangement was designed to make the contest as wide as possible for applicants. The following is the breakdown of the entries we have received this year.

	
        ENTRY category: 75 entries
	SPEED category: 8 entries
	IDEA category: 2 entries

The total number is much greater than that last year, thanks mainly to the establishment of the ENTRY category and also the extensive advertising efforts using magazines and other media. We are pleased to have received so many entries now that the contest has entered its third year.

The SPEED category for experts appears to have been as tricky as the one given last year, which may account for the small number of entries. Even so, all these entries were equally well prepared and of high quality. We regret that there were only two programs submitted for the IDEA category.

Like last year, the working committee comprised those working in KL1 designs and processing system development at ICOT and also KL1 users. We asked many people for their assistance in order to be precise and fair in measuring the execution time of each program entered and assessing the manuals. In the ENTRY category, many entries were above the pass level and we had to draw lots to determine which ones should be accepted. This means that some entries were unsuccessful not because of their contents, but simply because of bad luck.
A photo of this lot drawing is on the Internet.

Below is a review of the entries at each level. On the whole, the applicants all seemed to have a good grasp of KL1 characteristics, with many works being well thought out. As the chairman of the working committee, I found the results highly satisfactory, and I would like to congratulate all the applicants for their efforts and good work.

This contest was to have been the last one held under the auspices of the Research Institute for Advanced Information Technology (AITEC) of Japan Information Processing Development Center (JIPDEC), but I am happy to inform you that it will be continued under a different format.

Lastly, I thank again all those applicants for their excellent work and those who took part in the screening process for their time and help.