🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <27661@castle.ed.ac.uk>, bxhv02@castle.ed.ac.uk (Tim Wilkinson) writes:

+> Dear all
+> I'm looking for some info on the probability of splitting a single transputer
+> link to allow it to be connected to more than one destination transputer. 
+> Any details or advice would be much appreciated.
+> 
+> Cheers
+> 
+> Tim

At NIKHEF-H (the lab I where worked before moving to the supercollider) we 
developed a circuit for broadcasting with TP links, e.g. 1 sending transputer to n
receiving transputers, one way only. Basically the circuit looked like this:

1)DATA.

  Just connect the receiving TP's to the sending TP.

2) ACKNOWLEDGE.

   Connect every receiving TP to a flip-flop. The initial condition of all flip
   flop's should be low. The first bit of the acknowledge packet will set the
   flip-flop output high. Connect all flip-flop's to an AND gate. As soon as all
   TP's have acknowledged the data packet, the output of the gate will become 
   high. This triggers a pulse former which then creates a 3 bit acknowledge
   packet. This packet is sent to the sending TP and resets the flip flop's. For
   the sending TP it looks like only 1 packet has been sent. There is no problem
   with receiving TP's not ready to receive data.

(Probably this explanation is as clear as mud. I have the diagram in postscript
somewhere, if anybody is interested let me know and I'll send you a copy).

This circuit only works in one direction, the receiving TP's cannot send anything
over the link to the sending TP but for our application this was not a problem.

Henk.