🚀 go-pugleaf

I have not seen any mention of Atari in connection with Transputers
recently on the digests or in the U.S. magazines so I thought you might
be interested in this...

Most of the British computer press have printed news articles over the
past few weeks about certain Atari contracts. Apparently, Atari have
reached an agreement of some sort with a U.K. company Perihelion to
develop a Transputer based prototype !

Very few actual details have appeared and some of these appear to
contracdict each other. Those aspects of the machine that do seem
firm are:

Operating System:
      HELIOS is being developed by Perihelion as the standard operating
      system for Transputers (this is being aided by a recently awarded
      government grant). The current plans are that HELIOS will look like
      UNIX with a full X-Windows interface.

      They are also reported as wanting to promote the use of C for
      transputers instead of Occam to ease porting of applicaions.

Processor:
      Almost certainly the T800 (20 mhz), very impressive even when used
      as a single processor system. It is a 32 bit processor and includes
      an on-chip floating point unit.

      One article I have seen quotes the performance of the slower T414
      processor (20 mhz) as 10 MIPS !

What is not clear is the form that this new machine will take. Perihelion
chairman, Jack Lang is reported to have said that the new machine will
have  "its own bit-blitter and lightning graphics of at least 1024x768
resolution". The same article credits Lang with three stages of the
product:

      1. As an ST add-on. In some way this is supposed to allow existing
      software to run unaltered and about five times faster !?

      2. An all new machine with an ST inside the transputers box.
      This requires software to be ported over (why?) though this is
      supposed to be simple for GEM based (C?) programs. The article
      claimed that this would result in a faster, more connectable and
      expandable box than anything produced by DEC.

      Lang (and everybody else ?) hopes to bring this in for under
      1000 pounds ($1600).

A British ST/Amiga Rival ??
---------------------------

I thought that newas of a British micro that is due for official
launch at the PCW Show in London this month would be of interest
to ST users.

Acorn, a company that were not exactly a raging success when they
tried to launch their BBC Micro range of computers in the U.S., have
released a machine that they claim is the worlds fastest micro !

The Archimedes (I know, silly name) range of micros is based on
Acorns own RISC architecture processor (the ARM). This is a 32
bit chip with 27 general purpose 32 bit registers. In its current
form it runs at between 4 and 8 MIPS though this is really limited
by the speed of the memory (Acorn have clocked ARMs up to 18 MIPS).

There are over 20 graphics modes ranging from 25 by 40 text up to
640 by 512 (and 1280 by 978 on the A400 series) in up to 256
simultaneous colours (i.e. 8bits/colour) from a pallette of 4096.
There is no blitter chip, but you don't miss it - the processor is so
fast that a blitter really isn't needed. Software Sprites of any size
and colour (depending on mode) are provided.

Sound is similar to the AMIGAs, using wave form tables. There are
8 sound channels each with a stereo position from 1 (left) thru
128 (centre) to 255 (right). Speech is possible but not part of the
bundled sotware.

The machine is incredible ! I haved played with one for a few minutes
and should be able to get access to one on loan within the next few
months. It is difficult to describe how fast this machine is but two
items do illustrate the fact:

      - The desktop environment shipped with early machines is
        provided on disk and is written in interpreted BASIC !
        This will be changed for the final release versions but
        even now this is the fastest windowing envronment I have
        seen; everything happens instantaneously, windows simply
        appear !

      - A demontration version of a game, still in development, is
        supplied with the machine. You guide a "lander" type craft
        over a detailed surface made up of cubic patches. You can fly
        the lander in ANY direction, towards and away from the screen,
        over the valleys and lakes of the planet. All the particles,
        splashes in the water, the rocket motors all behave
        ballistically. It may turn out to be a terrible game but it
        is an incredible demonstration of processing power.

The Operating system offers a form of multi-tasking and there is a
true multi-tasking, unix like operating system under development for
the A400 series. A 6502 emulation that can run "legal" BBC Micro
programs is supplied with the machine and a software emulation of
the 8088 running MS-DOS should also be available - both of these
emulations are supposedly faster than the machines they mimic !

Up to 2 or 4 slots are supported in-machine and these will be able
to take a variety of cards. One of the first cards is a co-processor
unit with a 10MHz 80186 running MS-DOS. Others for the A400 series
will include a floating point unit (normally emulated in software so
no change in code is required) and even additional, faster, ARMs
working in parrallel !

One of the main problems I can see at present is that memory is
currently limited to 4 MB by the memory management unit even though
the processor can address at least 32 MBs. Also, the machine could do
with a decent set of bundled software instead of the demos currently
planned.

Prices for the A300 series are close to those of the Atari MEGA ST2 and
the A400 series is around the price of an AMIGA A2000.

Who knows whether Acorn will risk the U.S. market again but this
machine might push Atari into proceeding with the Transputer project !

Keith Wolstenholme
JANET: UK.AC.SALFORD.R-D