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<Paper uid="M92-1019">
  <Title>SRI INTERNATIONAL FASTUS SYSTEM MUC-4 TEST RESULTS AND ANALYSIS</Title>
  <Section position="2" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="intro">
    <SectionTitle>
INTRODUCTION
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> The system that SRI used for the MUC-4 evaluation represents a significant departure from syste m architectures that have been employed in the past . In MUC-2 and MUC-3, SRI used the TACITUS tex t processing system [I], which was based on the DIALOGIC parser and grammar, and an abudctive reasone r for horn-clause logic . In MUC-4, SRI designed a new system called FASTUS (a permutation of the initia l letters in Finite State .Automata-based Text Understanding System) which we feel represents a significant advance in the state of the art of text processing . The system shares certain modules with the earlie r TACITUS system, namely modules for text preprocessing and standardization, spelling correction, Hispani c name recognition, and the core lexicon . However, the DIALOGIC system and abductive reasoner, which wer e the heart and soul of the previous system, were replaced by a system whose architecture is based on cascade d finite-state automata . Using this system we were capable of achieving a significant level of performance on the MUC-4 task with less than one month devoted to domain-specific development . In addition, the system is extremely fast, and is capable of processing texts at the rate of approximately 3,200 words per minute , measured in CPU time on a Sun SPARC-2 processor . (Measured according to elapsed real time, the system about 50% slower, but the observed time depends on the particular hardware configuration involved .)</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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