schabacker@fra04.dec.com (posting for Christian Balzer) (06/13/88)
In a recent article Eric Lee Green writes: > >Perhaps you saw a paper handed out at Devcon, entitled "Transputer design >concept" or something like that. Note the words "DESIGN CONCEPT" -- that is, >it's just an idea, that may or may not eventually be available, depending upon >whether Commodore sees any market for such a board. > >My thoughts on the matter: 8 Transputers (2 boards) would be handy for the >graphics stuff, with appropriate programming. But I really don't relish the >thought of Occam :-). > No way Jose, the Amiga Transputer board (A2800, A2404??? :->) already has left the vapourware orbit and is on its landing path. There was one in one of the Amigas at CeBIT and two guys from Helios were hanging around to impress you with some dazzling dhrystone benchmarks (something in the 3000+ range). The board is/was developed by CBM-Braunschweig here in Germany and had one T800 (or T404, I'm not sure) and 2MB RAM on it. The release version will come with 4 (four!) T800's (or at least 3 empty sockets <grin>) and 4 MB RAM. They told me that they plan to offer a "sandwich" PCB (to be placed above the Transputer board) that will include a graphic interface which will turn your Amiga into the long roumored (sp?) ABAC. And the Helios guys are planning to release an Ansi C (with semi-automatic modularisation for parallel processing) for the Transputer soon, so you Occam fiends will be able to continue to deal with the "Assembly language of the 80's". :-) And even if CBM should not decide to produce the Transputer Board, there are ALREADY several (different configuration) native Amiga boards available from a German developer. Let's multicompute (Amiga + Brideboard + 68020(30) card with Unix + Transputer + + +) See ya, <CB> -- __ __ / / | \ \ <CB> aka Christian Balzer - The Software Brewery - // / / | \ \ UUCP : decwrl!{frambo|fra03|fra04}.dec.com!schabacker // < < |---< > or : schabacker@{frambo|fra03|fra04}.dec.com \\ // \ \ | / / CIS : 71001,210 (It's a friends account, be brief) \X/ \ \__ |__/ / Snail: Im Wingertsberg 45, D-6108 Weiterstadt, F.R.G "If there is something more important than my ego, I want it rounded up and executed." No matter what you disclaim, you go to jail!
elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green) (06/14/88)
In message <8806131524.AA29958@decwrl.dec.com>, schabacker@fra04.dec.com (posting for Christian Balzer) says: >>Perhaps you saw a paper handed out at Devcon, entitled "Transputer design >>concept" or something like that. Note the words "DESIGN CONCEPT" -- that is, >>it's just an idea, that may or may not eventually be available, depending upon >>whether Commodore sees any market for such a board. >No way Jose, the Amiga Transputer board (A2800, A2404??? :->) already >has left the vapourware orbit and is on its landing path. There was >one in one of the Amigas at CeBIT My office here is cluttered with hardware that runs yet never made it to market, so I'll "believe it when I see it", so to speak. The problem is marketing such a beast. It may be possible to market it effectively in Europe, where users are generally more technically proficient (i.e. all the users are "hackers" a' la' Richard Stallman). But if you look at the products that Commodore has brought to market recently, none of them are "niche" products... they're products usable by the general public, thus giving a larger market to go for. But a Transputer board appeals to a "niche" market -- graphics processing and other highly parallelizable applications, generally. Which is NOT the general public. Commodore's strength is its manufacturing capabilities, which can churn out large quantities of machines for a low price. Commodore can't make small quantities of things any cheaper than 3rd-party developers can. Thus when a "niche" product comes up, Commodore should get into it only if it requires system modification (e.g. the new hi-res B&W monitor that Duck et. al. are working on software for). I'd rather have enhancement of the current machines and introduction of other wide-appeal hardware, than dozens of niche products of dubious utility to the average man-on-the-street. Just my views on why I'm not counting on a Commodore transputer in my machine anytime soon (as for 3rd-party transputers... we'll have to see). -- Eric Lee Green ..!{ames,decwrl,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!elg Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509 "Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?"