🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <66231@brunix.UUCP> lr@cs.brown.edu (Luigi Rizzo) writes:
>Does anyone knows the approx. prices - in USA and other
>countries, qty 1 - for a T800-20 and an i860 ? I'm trying
>to figure out the cost/MFLOP of these CPUs, and what could
>it be the price of the H1.

	I don't know about a T8, qty 1, but my understanding is that
the i860 is in the ballpark of $1000. (Maybe less by now).
	I would be surprised at having to pay much more than $100
for a T8 chip.

>And what about the prices of TRAM modules ? In Italy (note -
>Inmos is now owned by SGS, which is italian) a T800-20 is priced
>around $450 (1 pc.) and D-RAMs are just a little more expensive than
>here in the USA. Now, how comes that a TRAM with a T800-20 and 4M DRAM is
>priced $3000-3500 as a minimum ? One of those salesmen once told
>me that "there are high design costs for these boards"... perhaps
>he did really believe it!

	There are cheaper places to buy TRAMS than from Inmos.
We've found that Transtech's prices are lower for a lot of the
things we buy. Call Harry Bates at (607)257-6502.

	BTW, my understanding is that SGS and Thomson (the French
conglomerate) both have pieces of Inmos, or rather, Inmos is now
owned by a cooperative venture of SGS and Thomson. (Or, as the Brits
would say, "Inmos are now owned...")

>- TRAM modules are kind of a toy: you buy one (or an evaluation
>  kit) and don't care too much about the price; then your
>  interest disappears and you don't buy them any more so that
>  there is not enough demand to keep prices low
>  (and those who are really interested in massive use of Transputer,
>  and do care about their [company|school]'s money, sure they
>  build their own modules...)

	The TRAM has exactly the same problem as all the other
transputer systems/boards, with the additional one that there are so
many other transputer packages out there to compete with. If Inmos
had refused to sell transputers in any other package than the TRAM,
they might be a little cheaper... maybe.

	I think there are two kinds of people who use transputers.
One is the computer scientist who is doing research on parallel
systems, and the other is the scientist or engineer whose
number-crunching application takes too long to run on his PC.
Neither represents a really high-volume customer for TRAMs, since
the needs of either are likely to be met with a relatively small
transputer network (about the size that will fit into the spare
slots in the user's PC).

	The latter is likely to not be attracted by the
reconfigurability of the TRAM approach, since all he really wants is
more megaFLOPS. He'll probably buy his transputers hard-wired to a
PC board.

	To the people who have really massively parallel
applications, the transputer network is either too small or too
slow, or both. The hypercube manufacturers got rid of
store-and-forward message passing a long time ago, and Inmos doesn't
have the silicon to build really large link-switchable networks.
These people will probably buy iPSCs, Ncubes, MasPars, or Connection
Machines.

>- the TRAM design is patented, so there are some high royalties
>  to be paid;

	I don't think that Inmos would be silly enough to pay
themselves royalties - besides, I understood that they'd placed the
TRAM spec in the public domain.

-- 
Jeff Carroll
carroll@ssc-vax.boeing.com