🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <8907150609.AA01452@sdsu.edu> davidson@SDSU.EDU (Craig Davidson) writes:

<text deleted>

>Before going into this in much more depth I will let you know my bias.  I have
>been working with, or trying to work with, the Transputer and occam since 1984.
>In my opinion the Transputer is  elegant and probably the best design for large
>parallel processing systems.  Many companies have proven this, not only though
>Transputer based machines, but the Ncube, Intel iPSC and Amatek hypercubes.

What do you mean by this last sentence? How have Ncube (which uses a custom-
made proprietary chip), Intel (which used the 80286 and now uses the 80386
chip) and Amatek proven anything? Are you saying these companies in not using
the Transputer are proving the Transputer is "elegant and probably the best
design for large parallel processing systems" ?

>The occam language is elegant and powerful.  I currently teach a Macintosh
>version of Peter Welch's Occam and Transputer course here in the United States.
>The response to occam has been very favorable and the attendees are generally
>impressed with power of the language and how it makes them think about their
>problems.  I am pro occam and Transputer in my bias.  

Perhaps, but I can think of two cases that might lead to different opinions
about Occam. First of all, Cogent Research, which makes a Transputer-based
workstation called the X/TM, uses Linda (C-Linda, kernel Linda, etc) as its
primary programming language. If the Transputer and Occam are such a wonderful
fit, why has Cogent Research jumped on the Linda bandwagon?

Secondly, Floating Point Systems didn't have what most would call
successful market penetration with their T Series machines, also based on
the Transputer, but offering Occam as its first programming language. I have
talked to many former Floating Point employees (and believe me, around here
there are a ton of 'em) and most told me they felt forcing Occam down 
customer's throats (let alone their own) was a mistake. They didn't like the
language. In the August 1986 issue of the "Communications of the ACM" in
an article by Karen A Frenkel, the FPS T series machine is discussed. The
article talks about Kenneth G. Wilson of Cornell University, who helped
with the design, not being happy with Occam and expecting Unix to be
running on the machine in a few months. Charles L. Seitz of Cal Tech didn't
seem to fond of Occam either, declaring it "... the Fortran of parallel
processing..."

I certainly don't want to start another processor war, but I am curious
as to what was meant by Transputer being the best design for parallel
machines.
-- 
Steven C. Neighorn           !tektronix!{psu-cs,nosun,ogccse}!qiclab!neighorn
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