mit@hutcs.hut.FI (Markku Tamminen) (04/12/89)
I would like to connect our Unix-world to transputers through Ethernet, and I am looking for references in this area. It seems that for the architecture I am considering the Ethernet bandwidth would be sufficient, and could't be worse than that obtained when going through a PC. (The application is high-end rendering with raytracing/radiosity, and the global architecture is a workstation farm connected by TCP/IP. The transputer network should look globally just like another farm member. It need only be accessed by one application at a time. The transputer network itself would use more sophisticated farming without data replication.) Wre are using the Logical Systems C-compiler and doing cross-development from Unix. At OUG-10 I heard the interesting talk of Roger Peel on his system. The purpose of this inquiry is to check what other software and experiences there are around. Also I already received the following most interesting answer: From: paul%amos@ucsd.edu (Paul Smith) To: mit@hutcs.hut.fi Yes, indeed I can offer something. We have a TCP/IP driver working between our Sun and our transputer network. We have a B011 in the sun and 4 CSA boards hanging off that. We have an IP kernel running on each of the transputers in the network. You can ping any of the transputers from the sun (and our Vax, connected to the sun via ethernet), and of course send any other packets. We mainly use the IP kernel as a debugging tool because we don't want the routing overhead for our application. The overhead isn't really too bad though. The kernel has a couple of bugs in it that I'm trying to get someone to fix, but it's very useful as is. The bug(s) shows up when multiple transputers are trying to send to the sun at the same time, this occasionally hangs the network. All of our software is written with Logical Systems C and is available free to anyone. Feel free to forward this info to anyone who queries you, or post it if you like. Paul If you are using similar architectures or know of relevant software (university or other), please send me a note. I know that INMOS has their IMS B407 board and that Perihelion also have an Ethernet connection. Thanks, Markku Tamminen INTERNET: mit@hutcs.hut.fi ARPANET: mit%hutcs.uucp%fingate.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu CSNET: mit%hutcs@hut.fi BITNET: mit%hutcs.uucp@fingate UUCP: mcvax!hutcs!mit Helsinki University of Technology Laboratory of Information Processing Science 02150 ESPOO 15 FINLAND Tel: 358-0-4513248 (messages: 4513229, home: 710317) Telex: 125161 HTKK SF Telefax: 358-0-465077