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From: ian@loral.UUCP (Ian Kaplan)
Newsgroups: net.rumor,net.chess,net.arch
Subject: Re: Cosmic Cube and Transputers.
Message-ID: <811@loral.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 19-Mar-85 16:41:20 EST
Article-I.D.: loral.811
Posted: Tue Mar 19 16:41:20 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 21-Mar-85 04:23:39 EST
References: <825@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA>
Reply-To: ian@loral.UUCP (Ian Kaplan)
Organization: Loral Instrumentation, San Diego
Lines: 35
Xref: watmath net.rumor:702 net.chess:828 net.arch:1010
Summary: 


   The Transputer has four bit serial I/O channels, so that you could build
   at most a 4-D cube (each node in the cube network has connections to
   four other processors).  The Cosmic Cube and the iNTEL iPSC are 6-D
   cubes.  The Transputer is designed for 2-D processor arrays.  Arrays of
   this sort are usually used in systolic and pipelined array processing
   applications.  NCR has already had some success in this area (See
   "Systolic Array Chip Matches the Pace of High-speed Processing", a four
   part serries in Electronic Design, Oct. 31 through December 13).

   Inmos seems to claim more utility for the Transputer than I have outlined 
   above, but I have not seen any information to back this claim.  
   Inmos has also been claiming that their Occam language is a great 
   break through in parallel processing languages.  I believe that an
   examination of the Occam programmer's manual ("Occam Programming
   Manual", INMOS Limited, Prentice-Hall International) is sufficient to
   dispel INMOS's claims.

   Also, last I heard, the Transputer was *still* not available.

   Disclaimer and all that:

   Occum and INMOS are trademarks of the Inmost Group of Companies.

   The opinions expressed here are entirely my own and do not reflect
   official opinion of Loral Instrumentation.  Affiliation is included for
   purposes of identification only.

		     Ian Kaplan
		     Loral Data Flow Group
		     Loral Instrumentation
		     (619) 560-5888 x4812
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