jipping@cs.hope.edu (Mike Jipping) (04/30/91)
What would you say is the biggest obstacle to using Transputers? I'm
willing to guess that CONFIGURATION is -- if not the BIGGEST problem --
one the top few. We just completed teaching a class on parallel
programming, and configuration was probably the most confusing aspect to
the students. It's the combination of LOTS of tools and different/tedious
specification languages that causes much of the confusion.
We developed XTrace -- the X Transputer Configuration Environment -- to
alleviate some of this confusion. It's a graphic X-windows-based tool
that allows a "point and shoot" method of configuration. Using this
tool, a programmer can draw a Transputer configuration -- including links
-- and can specify -- with the mouse -- the placement of software modules
and channels on TRAMs and links. The program will write the
configuration files necessary to configure the hardware, software, and
program builds and even do some of configuration/building for you.
XTrace has three modes.
* In hardware mode, XTrace uses the "check" family of public domain
programs (or the INMOS "ispy" equivalents) to configure the TRAMs.
It and can parse any configuration "check" can and saves the
hardware specification in "check" format.
* In software mode, XTrace takes a short description file of your
software (basically, a subset of the INMOS software configuration
syntax -- process descriptions and connections of logical
channels) and allows the placement of processes and channels onto a
hardware TRAM configuration. It then generates a software
configuration file for the INMOS toolset family: C or Occam. [3L is
currently not supported, but support could be added. Basically, we
don't have a 3L compiler.]
* In build mode, XTrace takes the software description file and
generates a Makefile for your application. INMOS toolsets can do
this already using "imakef" -- but using "imakef" involves many
small "lnk" files and can be quite tedious.
NOTE THESE REQUIREMENTS: XTrace is built using Sun Microsystems' PD XView
toolkit for X windows. It has only been tested with a Sun host to the
Transputer network on B014 motherboards. It assumes the "check"/"ispy"
family of programs for configuring the TRAM network. Also, you need the
INMOS toolset -- not the 3L toolset -- for C or Occam.
If these requirements are stiff, I can probably provide the statically
compiled versions -- for those on Sun hosts without XView libraries. But
the only Unix boxes here are Suns, so that's all I can provide.
You can find XTrace on smaug.cs.hope.edu (35.197.146.1) as
"/pub/xtrace-2.0.tar.Z". It has been "class-tested" -- that is,
heat-treated by a class of 10 wildly programming students. It is,
however, in its first "public" release, even though the version number is
at 2.0.
Please send comments, suggestions, questions, and bugs to me at my
address below. I am very interested in making this an efficient and
smooth tool -- because we will continue to use it in student-based
environments and I want to make configuration as small an obstacle to
programming as possible.
Mike Jipping
Hope College Department of Computer Science
jipping@cs.hope.edu (BITNET: JIPPING@HOPE)
"Koo koo ka choo"
-- Simon and Garfunkel, "Mrs. Robinson"