Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!decwrl!ucbvax!UCF1VM.CC.UCF.EDU!brandis%INF.ETHZ.CH From: brandis%INF.ETHZ.CH@UCF1VM.CC.UCF.EDU (brandis) Newsgroups: comp.lang.modula2 Subject: Re: (none) Message-ID: <9011140753.AA06889@orion.inf.ethz.ch> Date: 14 Nov 90 07:53:48 GMT References: Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: Modula2 List Organization: Departement Informatik, ETH, Zurich Lines: 24 Transputer is a processor architecture developed by Inmos. The special think about transputers is that they have links right built into the chip, that are used for processor intercommunication. Because of this, very cheap parallel processor can be built using transputers, as all what you need for a node is a transputer and some memory. Transputers have also some support for multiprocessing and rapid task-switching built into the instruction set. However, without going into details, the transputer is mainly useful for large-grained parallel applications, where a lot of computation has to be done between communication steps. This is because of the architecture of the links, which provide high-latency communication with a not-so-great transmission speed. The current implementations of the architecture are the T414 and the T800. There are also quite a lot of support chips. (* I speak only for myself. Marc-Michael Brandis, Institut fuer Computersysteme, ETH-Zentrum CH-8092 Zurich email: brandis@inf.ethz.ch brandis@iis.ethz.ch *)