many times the size of the rules themselves. Surprisingly, the combination of these rules resulted in an overall design that exceeded the capabilities of the experts themselves, and in many cases out-performed the human counterparts. While some rules contradicted others, top-level control parameters for speed and area provided the tie-breaker. The program was highly controversial but used nevertheless due to project budget constraints. It was terminated by logic designers after the VAX 9000 project completion.

During the years before