Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!SDSU.EDU!davidson
From: davidson@SDSU.EDU (Craig Davidson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.transputer
Subject: Re: Transputer vs. i860
Message-ID: <8907181536.AA13030@sdsu.edu>
Date: 18 Jul 89 15:36:39 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
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>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" ?

What I meant was the CSP (Communicating Sequential Processes) model of 
programming distributed memory systems.  This is directly implemented in occam
and in hardware by both the Ncube and Transputer processors.  All the
hypercube machines and their operating systems use this parallel 
processing model as well.  Most versions of C, Fortran and Pascal that I am
familiar with on distributed memory machines also have followed the CSP model.
Even Ada (through rendezvous etc) and Linda are CSP based systems.  It is the
CSP architecture which is elegant.

>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..."

Floating Point Systems T-series market penetration would have been as bad 
if they had offered C without reals or multi-dimensional arrays, with 
no assembler or instruction set reference manual, no standard numeric 
libraries and no operating system.  The example of Floating Point Systems
is also a reaffirmation of what I was trying to say, that is Inmos has been
reluctant to work with third party developers to produce industry standard
languages such as C or environments close enough to UNIX to be used. To
their credit they are much better now.  I was also trying to point out
that Intel is learning faster than Inmos.

Charles L. Seitz's comment that occam was "... the Fortran of parallel 
processing" is not necessarily a negative comment.  Occam is a start, it has
the control structures necessary for parallel processing and it is something
to build on.  Even Tony Hoare and David May would agree with Charles Seitz
and do not claim that occam is the ultimate parallel language, only a
useful beginning.  As to Fortran, last I looked vendors are now starting 
to offer Fortran-88, how many languages have, or will, survive for over 
30 years with the popularity of Fortran.  The Ncube, Intel, and Amatek
hypercubes all offer Fortran, why not the "Fortran of parallel processing?"
Since Charles Seitz was brought up, does anyone have the article 
reference where he describes the hypercube chip he is designing?

re: Wm Leler's p.p.s. about booth space at Siggraph.  Last I heard Inmos had
planned to fill its booth with its own products.  They had offered free
space in smaller shows earlier this year.

Craig Davidson