haitex@pnet01.CTS.COM (Wade Bickel) (10/14/87)
This is a response to message 8903 about the INMOS Transputer vs.
other types of processors. I'm not going to include it here and
hope you can just call it up and read it.
Anyway, arn't you all missing the point by analysing the "MIPS"
rating of these processors and using the results to compare the
chips? I followed the Transputer for a couple of years, but became
dicouraged because the actual pricing of the component has never
even been close to those pro-offered by INMOS at their Transputer
seminars. What attracted me to the Transputer was the parallel
processing capabilities it supports. This is what the Transputer
is all about, and none of the other systems discussed support
this type of capability.
At the current time I find the University of Lowell's (Mass.)
image processing board to be more intresting than the Transputer.
First of all, they (claim to) already have the system working,
and we're talking 35 MIPS (I mean it will execute 35 million
instructions each second) and this INCLUDES MULTIPLY (17x17bits).
The system is based upon NEC parts, and basically consists of
up to seven 5 MIPS processors which operate in a bucket brigade,
and one chip to handle most aspects of communications, including
direct access to the Amiga memory.
Furthermore NEC claims it will release a 10 MIPS processor
version before the end of the year, resulting in 70 MIPS. With
multiply on every cycle that seems damn powerful to me! Only
problem is the system looks tricky to program.
As far as the Transputer goes, I think the Transputer language,
OCCAM, would be a natural for the amiga. It supports multi-tasking
at the language level, and looks to be fairly complete.
Wade.
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INET: haitex@pnet01.CTS.COMccplumb@watmath.UUCP (10/16/87)
In article <1858@crash.CTS.COM> haitex@pnet01.CTS.COM (Wade Bickel) writes: > As far as the Transputer goes, I think the Transputer language, > OCCAM, would be a natural for the amiga. It supports multi-tasking > at the language level, and looks to be fairly complete. H'm... The Occam model of message passing involves synchronized passing and copying of data. The Amiga's primitives do not copy messages, but do queue them. Occam assumes that all memory requirements (including run-time stack requirements) can be computed at compile time. The Amiga allocates memory left, right, and centre. This is compatible? Also, the known stack size implies no recursion. This is a point against "fairly complete". You wanted to do *what* to a binary tree? -- -Colin Plumb (watmath!ccplumb) "RISC tends to be any 32-bit processor without an established market introduced since 1982"