This year marks the 20th anniversary of ICTP's microprocessor training activities. Much has changed over the years, yet the ultimate goals have stayed remarkably the same.

Microprocessing at ICTP:
Twenty Years Young

When Ang Chu Suan, a lecturer at this year's ICTP Workshop on Distributed Laboratory Instrumentation Systems, stepped up to the podium for his presentation, he glanced down at his computer, pressed four or five keys and then watched with others as the overhead screen displayed the current room temperature in his office in Malaysia, some 10,000 kilometers away. A toasty 34°C, thank you.
"It's easy," Ang says. "My laptop computer here in Trieste is connected via the internet to my desktop computer in Malaysia. My computer in Malaysia, in turn, is equipped with an embedded microprocessor system that receives data from the thermometer. The data is relayed to my computer in Malaysia, which sends the information back to Trieste. All I do is turn on the switch and call up the information through a web-browser."
This year marks the 20th anniversary of ICTP's microprocessor training courses. Ang's modest, flip-of-the-fingers, demonstration conveys the dramatic changes that have unfolded in the field over the past two decades. Catharinus Verkerk, a retired staff scientist from CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle Physics), who was given the task of organising and directing the first college in 1981 and has remained in that capacity ever since (in what he clearly considers a labour of love), recalls the early years.
"In 1981," says Verkerk, "computers were just beginning to take hold. ICTP didn't even have one. In the meantime, microprocessors had been around for just six or seven years and no one was quite sure where they would lead. In fact, the idea for the training course began with an off-the-cuff remark by Abdus Salam to Luciano Bertocchi, who was then head of training courses and scientific personnel at ICTP. (In 1983, Bertocchi would be appointed ICTP's deputy director).
"These new microprocessors," Salam said, "seem like interesting gadgets. Maybe ICTP should do something with them." Bertocchi quickly relayed Salam's sentiments to Paolo Zanella, director of CERN's Data Handling Division.
Salam's remark--and Zanella's enthusiastic response--led to the organisation of the first College on Microprocessors: Technology and Applications in Physics, held in early September 1981.
Getting ready for this initial activity proved an unforgettable experience that Verkerk vividly recalls as if it had happened just yesterday. "My colleagues at CERN, including Wolfgang Von Rüden, Sandro Marchioro and Ian Barnet, spent endless hours over a three-month period both to build the necessary hardware and software and to prepare the training material. Once these tasks were completed, we packed a van to carry the boards, terminals, cables, connectors and tools from Geneva, Switzerland, where the headquarters of CERN is located, to Trieste--a 15-hour journey."
"Upon our arrival, we had to unload and assemble everything. The training course in the first year was held in the basement of the Galileo Guesthouse, which was almost but not quite finished. Participants were housed in off-campus rooms and apartments scattered in and around Trieste."
Despite the logistical difficulties, the first college proved a success. Some 400 researchers from the developing world submitted applications. About 120 candidates were accepted, with 20 showing up the first day of the college without having officially notified the organisers. The laboratory was filled beyond capacity. In fact, laboratory sessions took place in three two-hour shifts, beginning at 2 in the afternoon and lasting until 8 in the evening.
"We immediately knew that we had launched an activity that would continue in the future," says Verkerk. "There was just too much interest and excitement for this to be a one-time event. So plans for the next college began even before the conclusion of the first college."
Indeed the expansion of microprocessor activities at ICTP unfolded rapidly during the early 1980s.
- In 1983, the second college was held in Trieste.
- In 1984, the microprocessor college was organised for the first time outside Trieste in Colombo, Sri Lanka, establishing an administrative framework that has resulted in colleges being held both in Trieste and in developing countries. Over the past 15 years, colleges have taken place in Bogota, Colombia (1985); Hefei, China (1986); San Luis, Argentina (1988); Cape Coast, Ghana (1995); Hanoi, Viet Nam (1998); and Dakar, Senegal (1999).
- In 1985, ICTP opened a microprocessing laboratory, under the direction of Alberto Colavita, an Argentinean physicist who had participated in the second college. The laboratory is designed in part to provide technical assistance to college participants and in part to pursue independent research projects. Under Colavita's direction, ICTP's Microprocessor Laboratory has developed partnerships with the United Nations University (UNU), CERN and the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN).
- In 1985, the United Nations University (UNU) also agreed to provide funding principally for colleges held in developing countries. The partnership with UNU would continue for some 15 years.

Catharinus Verkerk and Abhaya Induruwa

"ICTP's microprocessing activities," explains Abhaya Induruwa, a computer engineering professor at the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, who has co-directed the colleges with Verkerk since 1994, "have experienced three major shifts in focus over the past 20 years."
"First, from 1981 to 1994, participants worked with 'one-of-a-kind' microprocessor development systems that were essentially built to conform to our unique work environment. Building these systems was both fun and a learning experience but their utility was restricted to the Trieste campus."
"Second, the introduction of the free-of-charge Linux operating system at our 1994 college marked a giant step forward in our ultimate goal: to provide a practical means for the transfer of knowledge and skills through a common cost-free computer operating system that could be accessed on computers not just in Trieste but in countries throughout the developing world. In brief, course participants could now take their acquired knowledge and skills home--and, more importantly, apply what they learned to solving local and regional problems."
"Third," Induruwa notes, "this year we have changed 'course' again by fully recognising the enormous growth--and even more importantly, the enormous potential--of the internet. Our newly revised training workshop, presented for the first time this year, is essentially designed to teach participants how to control instruments distributed over the internet by using web-based technology."
Regardless of the changes in format that have taken place over the years, the courses have remained tightly focussed on the same goal: to help those involved in data acquisition, experimentation and equipment-control to take advantage of microprocessors to improve the efficiency and accuracy of what they do.
"While the majority of participants are researchers in universities," notes Induruwa, "our colleges have also attracted staff and technicians working in medical institutions and industrial firms. In addition, the participant list has become increasingly multidisciplinary. This year's list, for example, includes physicists, mathematicians, biologists and agriculturalists from 37 different countries."
"Our lecturers," Verkerk adds, "have also become more diverse. When we began, the entire group consisted of scientist from Europe. The 2001 workshop, in contrast, involves 11 lecturers from 11 countries, including Chile, Malaysia, Nigeria, and Ukraine.
Each year, ICTP's microprocessor training activities chooses 60 individuals from the developing world (usually from an applicant pool that exceeds 250). That means some 1200 scientists in total, virtually all from the developing world, have participated in these activities over the past 20 years.
Keeping pace with the rapid development of microprocessor technology has been a major challenge for scientists and technicians from around the globe--a challenge most acutely experienced in the developing world. As part of its larger mandate, ICTP has tried to meet this challenge by providing the most up-to-date microprocessor training activities and computer facilities that it possibly can.
The effort has not only helped boost the use of microprocessors in countries throughout the South but also has played a major role in changing the face of ICTP. Participants today have access to the Centre's newest addition: the Informatics Laboratory in the lower level of the Adriatico Guesthouse, home to some 50 state-of-the-art workstations. These workstations can be easily attached to embedded microprocessor systems that can provide, among other things, real-time recordings of room temperatures in an office in Malaysia.
Abdus Salam's intuition was right: these gadgets do have the potential to do some interesting things.

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