jouvelot@mit-vax.LCS.MIT.EDU (Pierre Jouvelot) (10/28/87)
I've heard some rumors about the cancellation of the FPS T Series. Does anyone have more information about that ? Thanks in advance, Pierre -- Pierre Jouvelot Room NE43-403 ARPA: jouvelot@xx.lcs.mit.edu Lab for Computer Science USENET: decvax!mit-vax!jouvelot MIT (or mcvax!litp!pj) 545, Technology Square TPH: (617) 253-0884 Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
fpst@hubcap.UUCP (10/28/87)
in article <2960@mit-vax.LCS.MIT.EDU>, jouvelot@mit-vax.LCS.MIT.EDU (Pierre Jouvelot) says: > > I've heard some rumors about the cancellation of the FPS T Series. Absolutele not! I just spent two days with the development people in Beaverton. On 10/30 C and Fortran will be available. We have seen their long range plans and Milt Smith (the Pres) assured us that the T is here to stay. As another indicator, FPS has a program for funding development and research on the T. Contact your local FPS reps. [ I am speaking as the head of the T-users SIG of the ARRAY users organization. ] -- Steve Stevenson fpst@hubcap.clemson.edu (aka D. E. Stevenson), fpst@clemson.csnet Department of Computer Science, comp.hypercube Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634-1906 (803)656-5880.mabell
andy@batcomputer.UUCP (10/29/87)
In article <603@hubcap.UUCP> fpst@hubcap.UUCP (Steve Stevenson) writes: >in article <2960@mit-vax.LCS.MIT.EDU>, jouvelot@mit-vax.LCS.MIT.EDU (Pierre Jouvelot) says: >> I've heard some rumors about the cancellation of the FPS T Series. >Absolutele not! I just spent two days with the development people >in Beaverton. On 10/30 C and Fortran will be available. Rumors or no rumors, FPS is in the financial dumps. They have slowed or stopped production of T's and don't have any new orders coming in. They are planning on retargeting their market. They got slapped pretty hard in the face when this machine didn't catch on, and they have started to figure out why. The FPS C and Fortran compilers are based upon the Pentasoft (formerly Penguin) tools (Unidot parser, Dwight's code generator, and assembler, linker, and binder from Pixar). Unfortunately for staunch supporters of FPS software, their C and Fortran environment aren't much better than their Occam environment. I know what much of their code is like -- I threw away over 5000 lines of uVax device driver code and 16000 lines of Occam for their interface board. Mind you, their release with C and Fortran is the first release under Unix. Past experience with other vendors have shown that a vendor's road from VMS to Unix is *very* rough... Did you notice the lack of a T-Series at FPS? The latest rumors I heard from "inside" indicate that *they* don't even have one -- they are using the T-200 at Los Alamos for in-house work. Our source also indicates that they are only looking as far forward as a contractual obligation with Los Alamos, with *no* software plans for the future. We have gotten the strong impression that the only T-Series plans they have for the next 6-8 months is to work on fixing the next generation vector board... We consider our inside source most reputable, but please keep in mind that these are rumors... >As another indicator, FPS has a program for funding development >and research on the T. Contact your local FPS reps. Ahhh, be wary. You'll end up spending a lot of time with laywers if things go for you the way they have been going for us... We are in the final stages of negotiation with FPS regarding our operating system. Whether Trillium becomes the official software for the T-Series from FPS is now mostly a matter of chance... >[ I am speaking as the head of the T-users SIG of the ARRAY users > organization. ] And I speak as a member of the software team that is finishing up the initial release of (hopefully) the operating system of choice for T-Series users. FPS wanted an exclusive license to Trillium -- we told them to take a walk... >Steve Stevenson fpst@hubcap.clemson.edu ps: for the curious specators: the uVax driver is up and working under Mt. Xinu -- 0.25MB/second through all 3 links, 0.75MB/second through 1. around 8 MFLOPS/node for tight VPU ops, we've hired someone for documentation, finishing some portability problems (bitmaps within structures -- Gould, Sun, Pentasoft: fine, Mt. Xinu: trouble)...we're getting there... -- Andy Pfiffer andy@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu Cornell Theory Center / Cornell U. cornell!batcomputer!andy Home of the first usable T-Series (607) 255-8686 "...that's the way a Transputer works, right?" Systems Group