bigjohn@manta.NOSC.MIL (John Morris) (08/03/90)
Thanks to all for previously requested info on VME bus transputer info. Warning!!! the following is opinion, leave the flame thrower home if you don't agree and just ignore the information. Synopsis follows: VME bus- Mieko, sells lowcost but non flexible soldered in place trams on VME bus. They will probibly socket the next generation tram. - All Others, sell basically the same thing. Bus master or slave boards holding 8 to 16 tram modules per board depending on size of board (6U/9U). All pretty much the same price also, depending on their being bus master or slave. Masters are much faster in the VME! Roughly $2K to $6K. S-Bus (Sparcstation) - buy a S-Bus to VME adaptor and external box. Near future will see a S-Bus card with one tram and links to external trams (not much room in SPARCSTATION), which should be faster than current bus adapter. Trams - More types than you ever wanted or cared for, including vector processors and SCSI for direct disk I/O. Contact InMos for catalog. Roughly $1K a pop. *** Next generation tram (H1?). higher speed, broader link bandwidth and multiplexed link comms. This last allows the trams to link flexibly during run time. Nice way to 'heal' a broken tram farm to keep a system running. This will require the upcomming 'COO' switch 'CO1O4' vice 'COO4'. This switch responds to the multiplexed link signals. Operating Systems - 3 varieties basically, bare bones and fast, good and with overhead, and does all things to all people and you pay for it! InMos - bare system, you handle ALL communication in your code. You pretty well have to be on good terms with InMos to go this route (buy from them!), they seem good people though and there seems little danger here, just work! This option seems best if your converstions over the VME bus are relatively primitive and short. Express - Nice flexible system with multihost capability and an acceptable amount of overhead. You will get running faster but may have to have more trams to get the performance you want. Helios - Not fair to call it the top of the line but it has tremendous breadth in its capabilities. Their big claim is that they support multiple workstations connecting to one transputer board over ethernet. Does well on all fronts as does Express. Considerably more overhead though. My personal choice was Express, but .... I will be glad to provide more explicit information but I didn't want to be too long here. Query me by e-mail and I'll give you what info I have.