heller@LISBOA.KS.UIUC.EDU (Helmut Heller) (07/25/90)
About two weeks ago I posted an inquiry about T800+i860
marriages. Since I was asked to summarize on the net I
am doing so:
1) Thanks to all of you who replied to my inquiry
(about 11 people).
2) I got to know of three vendors:
- Transtech
- MEiKO
- MicroWay
I have the addresses of all three, contacted them
and they all sent some info material back.
- INMOS has a VECTRAM which aims at the same market
segment.
3) Since each company has a different approach I will
describe each product seperately:
TRANSTECH:
TTM100: TRAM size6, 1 T805-25, 1 i860 @40MHz,
1 or 4 MByte local DRAM for Transputer,
4 or 16 MByte DRAM for i860, zero wait states, paged,
shared with T805 by arbiter logic (interrupt driven)
for communication
T805 and i860 can operate in parallel,
each, T805 or i860, can be "master", controlling the
other processor
module can be integrated in existing Transputer
sytems, software support for TDS (occam), Toolset,
3L compilers
special vector and lin. algebra libraries are
available
yet, how the software side actually works is not
entirely clear to me
no pricing information is available yet
delivery time of at least 10 weeks
MEiKO:
MK086: Computing Surface board that plugs into
MEiKO enclosures (M10)
2 * i860 @40MHz, each with 2 T800-25 (so there are
4 Transputers on this board) sharing
4, 8, 16 or 32 MBytes dual ported DRAM
(the 2 Transputers provide a total of 8 links per
i860 to somewhat balance the high computational
power with communications)
2 MByte DRAM local to the 2 Transputers of each i860
the Transputers are communication slaves to the i860
board works only in the Computing Surface environment
C and FORTRAN cross compilers for i860, source
vectoriser and vec libs are available;
pipelining and optimizing compilers are expected
for Q3 1990
pricing: from 40000 US-$ for a single MK086A-0004,
80000 US-$ for a package (sparcstation-host,
M10, MK086A-0004, software) up to, of course,
unlimited
MicroWay:
Number-Smasher-i860: plugs into the AT-bus of PCs
1 i860 @33MHz or @40MHz, 8 to 32 MByte DRAM,
no Transputers but 2 link adaptors
FORTRAN, C and PASCAL compilers available
pricing (including one compiler):
6000 US-$ @33Mhz - 7200 US-$ @40MHz, 8MByte DRAM
INMOS:
VECTRAM IMS B420: TRAM size4, 1 T800-25, 1 vector
signal processor, 256kByte dual ported SRAM shared,
1MByte DRAM local to T800
T800 is master
interrupt driven handshake between T800 and sig-proc.
This info is condensed from brochures. I do not claim
correctness nor will I be liable for anything.
Cheers,
Helmut
_________________________________________________
Helmut Heller
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Beckman Institute
Theoretical Biophysics Group
Transputer Lab, Room 3151
405 N. Mathews Ave.
Urbana, IL 61801, U.S.A.
Phone: (217)244-1586
e-mail: heller@lisboa.ks.uiuc.edu (internet)
u27013@ncsagate.bitnet (bitnet)
_________________________________________________
"Knowledge must be gathered and cannot be given"
ZEN, one of BLAKES7