simon@alsys.UUCP (Simon Waddington) (02/28/90)
In his article Mr D.T. Rat says: > Yeah. Inmos seem mainly to want to sell their own boards, compilers, > etc, etc rather than selling the chips to other companies. I used to > work for an avionics company who wanted to put them into jet fighters, and > the hassle of actually getting raw chips was, well, somewhat excessive. I cannot believe that customers are being starved of bare transputers, the T400's main claim to fame is its $20 price tag when purchased in bulk. Why bother advertise it as a $1 per MIP chip if no one can buy it at that price - I would take this as an open invitation for bulk orders. It is true that I cannot go to a high street electronics store and buy them but the same can be said of any number of processors/chips. Surely the uptake of the transputer (slow though it may have been) would have been even more hampered were it not for the availability of the well designed TRAM system which quickly gives the user a very flexible, WORKING transputer development system which can be extending as and when the need arises. > On the other hand, a friend of mine is involved in a contract with Inmos > writing ADA compilers and apparently has more transputers in, on or under > his desk than he knows what to do with (engineering samples). Speaking as the person refered to I wish to point out that at our company we do not have a huge pile of bare transputers waiting to be used. Our TRAM boards were kindly supplied to us for the development of an Ada compiler for the transputer and are fully utilised for such purposes. It is easy to think of any number of applications for transputers but unfortunately I have neither the time nor resources available to do so. Hence I shall just have to wait for the $1 per MIP personal computer based on transputers (it's still about two orders of magnitude away from that). S.Waddington ukc!alsys!simon simon%reading@ukc.ac.uk DISCLAIMER: these views are my own and do not represent those of my company nor any other of its employees.