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DEC's business and technology objectives require a strong research program. The Systems Research Center (SRC) and three other research laboratories are committed to lling that need. SRC began recruiting its rst research scientists in l984|their charter, to advance the state of knowledge in all aspects of computer systems research. Our current work includes exploring high-performance personal computing, distributed computing, programming environments, system modelling techniques , speciication technology, and tightly-coupled multiprocessors. Our approach to both hardware and software research is to create and use real systems so that we can investigate their properties fully. Complex systems cannot be evaluated solely in the abstract. Based on this belief, our strategy is to demonstrate the technical and practical feasibility of our ideas by building prototypes and using them as daily tools. The experience we gain is useful in the short term in enabling us to reene our designs, and invaluable in the long term in helping us to advance the state of knowledge about those systems. Most of the major advances in information systems have come through this strategy, including time-sharing, the ArpaNet, and distributed personal computing. SRC also performs work of a more mathematical avor which complements our systems research. Some of this work is in established elds of theoretical computer science, such as the analysis of algorithms, computational geometry , and logics of programming. The rest of this work explores new ground motivated by problems that arise in our systems research. DEC has a strong commitment to communicating the results and experience gained through pursuing these activities. The Company values the improved understanding that comes with exposing and testing our ideas within the research community. SRC will therefore report results in conferences, in professional journals, and in our research report series. We will seek users for our prototype systems among those with whom we have common research interests, and we will encourage collaboration with university researchers. This work may not be copied or reproduced in whole or in part for any commercial purpose. Permission to copy in whole or in part without payment of fee is granted for nonproot educational and research purposes provided that all such whole or partial copies include the following: a notice that such copying is by permission of the Systems Research Center of Digital Equipment Corporation in Palo Alto, California; an acknowledgment of the authors and individual contributors to the work; and all applicable portions of …