Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!samsung!uunet!mcsun!cernvax!ethz!visinfo
From: visinfo@ethz.UUCP (VISINFO Moderators)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Digital Animation Production
Keywords: Transputer T800
Message-ID: <2617@ethz.UUCP>
Date: 23 Nov 89 12:56:12 GMT
References: <42803@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Reply-To: visinfo@bernina.ethz.ch.UUCP (VISINFO Moderators)
Distribution: comp
Organization: ETH Zuerich, Switzerland
Lines: 51

In article <42803@bu-cs.BU.EDU> bear@bu-pub.bu.edu (Blair M. Burtan) writes:

>I saw some amazing things today.  Today, I met with the owner and designer
>of Digital Animation Productions.  The future of graphics workstations is
>here.  And it works.  A few days ago, I posted a paraphrased version of the
>full-page AmigaWorld ad.  One response complained of a lack of pictures. 
>No picture can do justice.  The 19 year-old inventor has built and has in
>production an Inmos T800 transputer based graphics workstation.

>	This system is making the computer world sit up and take notice. 
>The boards will run on PC and Amigas as well as some high-end workstations.
>But the designer has no intention to build one for the Mac.  Apple has
>offered to buy him out/in to develop the system for the Mac only.  They
>offered a cool million plus.  He said no.  Yippee! Yes the system works on
>other buses, but he prefers the Amiga because of the multitasking.

Great that finally someone makes a really professional graphics/transputer
board and prefers the Amiga. This could put the Amiga into a better position
in the eyes of professional users.
I saw this system at the AmiEXPO Cologne and was really impressed. Now
the Amiga is a graphics workstation with no limitations.

>Impulse is working on a port of Turbo Silver and
>Microillusions is porting Photon Paint.  And, get a load of this one, the
>guy who wrote Jet for Sublogic is developing something on the system. 

As far as I know Turbo Silver and Photon Paint is only available on the
Amiga now and not on the PC. Is this meaning that Impuls and Microillusion
make only software for the Transputer board with the Amiga as host computer?
This would be very easy, because they could leave the user interface on the
Amiga and implement only the rendering part on the T800. If not they must
completely rewrite the whole user interface either on the PC or on the
Transputer (which will be difficult because there is no standard Operating
System on the Transputer right now; they told me that Helios crashes very
often and they don't need a OS for raytracing when there is a host system
like the Amiga). If the Software is only running together with an Amiga and
not with the PC a lot companies will buy Amigas as host computers for their
Transputer boards. They want basically the Transputer system and so it is
probably not so important for them which computer is the host. This could
be a chance for the Amiga to be considered as a professional computer. The
software companies that now program for the Amiga can determine this by
adapting their software for the Transputer board while using the Amiga as
the user interface. A Transputer board really needs a multitasking system
as host.


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