🚀 go-pugleaf

[The following is some idle speculation, since the Atari Transputer
 machine is so amazing in it's purported capabilities I thought I
 would look at some of the specs as someone who was thinking about
 building such a machine. The results follow.]

In article <KW.RFDU.021087@SALF.D> (Keith Wolstenholme) writes:
>Yet more on the continuing life of the Atari Transputer in the
>British Computer press...
>
>The latest Popular Computer World (a weekly mag) carried another news
>item on the Atari Transputer quoting actual figures and even a launch
>date. So here it is:
>
>      - T800 Transputer. 15 mips. Single chip systems but can fit
>        up to 13 (!) T800's inside the system box.

And at $500 a pop thats $6,500 in chips.

>      - Fast graphics. Screen updates at 13 frames/sec on a 1 million
>        pixel screen.

Ok, 13 frames, assuming the 1280 X 960 resolution described below (4 colors)
(sounds like they are thinking of using the Intel 82786 chip) Thats 307200
bytes for the display, and at 13 frames/sec ? Thats about 4 Mbytes/sec
bandwidth so you can get by with 150ns RAMs. 

>      - 32 bit blitter, drawing at 100 mega-pixels/sec (I think this
>        could be a typo !).

This sounds like maybe the TI chip acting as blitter? 

>      - Screen modes:
>
>                    1280 x 960   4 colours
>                    1024 x 768   ?
>                    640  x 480   ?
>                    512  x 480   ?
>
>      - Pallette of 16,000,000 colours.

You ever priced analog RGB monitors that can display 1K pixels on a line?
I wish I knew the refresh rate, that would really be telling, but since
960 happens to be exactly twice 480 can we guess that this is accomplished
with interlace? If so you save a bundle since you only need a 28 Khz 
monitor rather than a 60KHz one, either way your video section is probably
going to be near ECL in speed. Maybe some fast CMOS. 

>Will be produced as an add-on box to the ST, followed by a stand-alone
>workstation.

A bit confusing what this means, does it mean that it's a compute engine?
What good are all these display modes and blitters etc if the ST screen
can't display/use them? 

>First shipments are scheduled for next June. (No doubt next June they will
>be "imminent" !)

Someone save the original message and post it in June will ya? Anyway, this
box sounds terrific. I could build it by June, maybe even have some software
that runs on it. My guess is that a 1 meg system (minimum with those big
screens to display) with color monitor would go for between 9 and 12 thousand
dollars. If they can do it cheaper than that I would like to see it. It 
sounds like they are trying to build a workstation, and I don't think they
have any magical aces up their sleeve. Everyone, including Apollo, DEC, Sun,
NEC, Toshiba, IBM, Apple, and Next are trying to build systems with similar
capabilities for the lowest possible price. And at the moment color 
workstations cost about $10K, more if you include peripherals like mass
storage. 

What's the point? Well let the $2,600 Mega-4's give you a clue. What you
(the user) want is not cheap, and Atari is just a company like the rest
of us trying to feed the bottom line. No bitching allowed when it costs
$9K ok? :-)


--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.