🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <20000001@ugun21>, josef@ugun21.UUCP writes:
> 
> What distinguishes a Transputer from any other processor, especially if
> I take a, let's say 68030 or 32532, add 4 communication channels
> and write software to do processor-processor communication?
> What makes a Transputer so interesting?


Aside from the MUCH lower chip count (& don't forget memory interface chips),
the transputer has a very fast process switch and nearly free inter-process
communications.

Meanwhile, occam is designed for people who dream distributed systems
as opposed to others who dream von Neumann and then have to coerce
their one thread onto multiple processors.  In fact, that's the key
transputer characteristic as well.  It's designed for the way I think.

That's enough for me.
...for you?


--Carl Ellison          ...!harvard!anvil!es!cme    (normal mail address)
                        ...!ulowell!cloud9!cme      (usenet news reading)
(standard disclaimer)

      What make the Transputer interesting is: 

        -- its integration (communication, multitasking, Floating-point on 
           the same chip) ==> speed 
        -- its RISC-like architecture (few simple short and fast instructions) 
        -- its built-in memory controller: The Transputer can drive DRAM with 
           no additionnal circuitry. 
        -- The speed and simplicity of its multitasking and communication due 
           to the fact that they are integrated at the processor-instruction 
           level.  

       To sum-up, the Transputer is great because it is ONE Transputer 
instead of being MANY circuits + software. 

       One of the main things I reproach to the Transputer is that it does not 
support virtual memory (vital to build any reasonnable stand-alone machine). 
       If anybody from INMOS reads this note, please, could he tell me when it 
will be done (or why it shouldn't be done...)? 

                   Dominique Grabas, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

In article <20000001@ugun21>, josef@ugun21.UUCP writes:
[stuff deleted...]
> I have had a discussion with my boss, and he posed this question:
> 
> What distinguishes a Transputer from any other processor, especially
> if I take a, let's say 68030 or 32532, add 4 communication channels
> and write software to do processor-processor communication?
> What makes a Transputer so interesting?
> 
> 		Josef Moellers

Well, you might say that the most interesting thing is that the
transputer does everything that his gob of 68xxx and communications
hardware and software does in one chip! Just the software effort
involved in the "roll your own" version would be an ugly cost.

Plus:

The transputer is fast (about the equivalent of a vax or sun 3 now,
and getting faster).

The communications are very fast, have very low startup overheads,
and operate without any need of the CPU after setup.
This is not easy to accomplish in discrete silicon with software.
In addition, the technology used for the communications allows for
long (about 30-40 feet) cable runs.

Memory management of the channels vs processor requirements are done
on chip.

The (T800) transputer has on-chip floating-point support.

The context-switch time on a transputer makes the 68xxx look like
a pig.

The transputer is RISC technology. The small instruction set means
that it's fairly easy to port compilers to it (although INMOS seems
to be real stodgy about realizing that the real world wants C and
FORTRAN).

INMOS has good plans for the future growth and enhancement of the chip
series. (Now if they'd just do the same with the software).

OPINION: The transputer will probably define the future of parallel
computing for the next 5 years or so IF IF IF INMOS will wake up
and realize that the OCCAM language is a significant hindrance to
acceptance of their product in the US market. OCCAM is a language
best suited to CS weenies (BTW IR1, so I can say that :-).

P.S. I am not an INMOS employee. I have had significant experience
with the transputer in a large scale parallel machine.
The transputer hardware works well, the software sucks rocks.
OCCAM is the single biggest roadblock to general acceptance of
transputer based systems. Most people that I introduced to the
OCCAM language system said "Come back when you have 'real' languages".
I am certain that we will not solve the problems of broad acceptance
and understanding of parallel processing's capabilities as long as
OCCAM is the context.
-- 
_    /| The opinions here are my own, and even I don't agree with me :-)
\'o.O'  I am not an employee of LANL, I just use their computers.
=(___)= I stole the .sig file, but I did not shoot no deputeeee.
   U    Bill sez: AAAAK! PHHHT!   jxdl@lanl.gov

I'd like to get more information about transputers, available
systems based on transputers, and what software has been written
for these systems.  I'm especially interested in documentation
for the transputer assembly language, an OCCAM programming manual,
and some description of whatever operating systems or executives
which have been ported to/written for transputer-based systems.

-Dan

[]

I hope members of this group realize that, in spite of Inmos's best
efforts (in the past), there ARE several compilers available right now
for the transputer, especially C compilers.  There are also assemblers.
Thus, one does NOT need to use the Occam language to utilize the
interesting hardware features of the transputer, even though Occam has
some nice features too.  One can use the third party software, and Inmos
themselves now offer C and FORTRAN too!  So why doesn't the transputer
take over the world?  Lack of decent SYSTEM software.  Of course, we at
Cornell are trying to fix that with the Trollius OS...  (and one should
also mention Helios).  There are already at least two vendors of transputer-
based hardware (for UNIX hosts) offering Trollius.

- Moshe Braner