Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!bionet!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!prlvax1.prl.philips.co.uk!EDMONDS
From: EDMONDS@prlvax1.prl.philips.co.uk (Mark from Philips)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.transputer
Subject: (none)
Message-ID: <890802140405.0000113B201@prlvax1.prl.philips.co.uk>
Date: 2 Aug 89 14:04:05 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 27

>"Scots businessman, Mr Nick Cameron, managing director of CAT Electro,
>Edinburgh, who has just returned from a trip to Communist countries, was
>astounded to find Bulgarians offering transputers, a supercomputing system
>invented in Britain just two years ago"...



At the PARLE (Parallel ARchitectures Languages Europe) a few months ago in
Eindhoven, I was talking to a couple of very nice Bulgarians from the
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, about the transputer situation out there. 

Apart from learning that Bulgaria was a great place to ski, they said that
they could get hold of transputers but it was very difficult and there were
very long waiting times.  The general impression I got is that they were
really keen to "get into" parallel processing, but were a bit fed up (not the
exact words they used!) about the restrictions (as one can imagine!).  They
also found it very difficult to get to European conferences. 

The thing is, where do they get them from? (I suppose I shouldn't ask such
questions!!) I've just spoken to someone from one of the INMOS distributors,
and, as I expected, they said they can't sell them to Eastern Bloc countries. 




Mark Edmonds
edmonds@uk.co.philips.prl