kyle@ucla-cs.UUCP (06/08/87)
Does anyone out there have the answers to the following...
1. What is the current news in the transputer arena?
2. Are there any development kits?
3. What companies make transputers or similar products?
Kyle Henriksen
Kyle Henriksen
ARPA: kyle@cs.ucla.edu
UUCP: {ihnp4,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!kyle
SPUD: kyle@mashed.spudtrb@stag.UUCP ( Todd Burkey ) (06/08/87)
There is a package for the Atari ST that consists of two Intec Transputers and the development language (can't recall the name right off hand.) The price for the package was under $2,000 last I heard (about 8 months ago.) I will have to dig through my notes and see if I can find the company name...has anyone out there purchased this package? -Todd Burkey ...ihnp4!meccts!stag!trb
andy@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Andy Pfiffer) (06/09/87)
In article <6462@shemp.UCLA.EDU> kyle@CS.UCLA.EDU (Kyle D Henriksen) writes: >1. What is the current news in the transputer arena? That is a little hard to say specifically, but... INMOS is now shipping Rev. A T800's (T414's with 4K on-chip RAM and IEEE floating point) and are in the ballpark of 1.3 MFLOPS with all code and stack running in on-chip RAM. The Rev. A masks essentially mean that the 4 communication links do not yet run in parallel. Look for a rough rating of 1.5 MFLOPS and parallel communication with the Rev B. masks. We don't have any T800's, but I do know of those who do (Hi Jeff!). I have caught wind of rumors of what to do with the left-over silicon on the T800, so you may see increased functionality (ie more on-chip RAM, more links, etc) with Rev B or the next generation Transputer. More organizations, especially ours and in the United States in general, are dropping Occam as the primary language for the Transputer with the advent of 3'rd party C compilers and development tools (I know of at least two companies now). Several sites are doing hardware development using the Transputer as the fundamental processing element. There are also sites building/selling/- developing hybrid hardware combinations such as the T-Series produced by Floating Point Systems (INMOS T414/Weitek VPU). More exotic interconnect topologies (rather than simple meshes) are slowly appearing, but are not yet predominant. (I believe the record for the largest, demonstrated, running system of Transputers is still held jointly by INMOS and Meiko with 420 T414's. *Please* inform/correct me if wrong). Not so many sites are also working on software development. We're building a message-passing operating system that runs on top of UNIX and native on Transputers. It was designed with the T-Series in mind, but could also run on most Transputer-farms (although that may not be productive for your applications). We dropped Occam in favor of C long ago -- we're doing things that just can't be done with Occam. Known manufacturers of Transputer farms include INMOS, Meiko, and CSA. Look for some gee-whiz graphics boxes within the coming year... There are also some 3'rd party manufacturers of VME<->link-adaptor and Qbus<->link-adaptor boards. Unknown: MultiBus, Unibus, SELbus (Gould). We may get around to building our own Gould HSD to link-adaptor interface if we ever hear back from the hardware folks from Gould in Florida. >2. Are there any development kits? INMOS sells several varieties of entry-level boards as well as CSA, although neither are development kits in the classic sense. >3. What companies make transputers or similar products? I don't know of any second-sources yet for the processors or optional support chips (ie link-adaptors, transputer-ish disk controller, etc). >Kyle Henriksen >ARPA: kyle@cs.ucla.edu >UUCP: {ihnp4,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!kyle >SPUD: kyle@mashed.spud Please apply neccessary trademark disclaimers. You and all interested parties are welcome to join the Transputer mailing list maintained here. It has a wide distribution both here and abroad and a semi-active :^) readership. Send mail addressed to me or "transputer-request" via your favorite path to the machine below to be added to the list. Andy -- 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