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From: dragon@trwspf.TRW.COM (Roger Vossler)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: 12 - 50 Mip Amiga 2000 CoProcessor?
Message-ID: <361@trwspf.TRW.COM>
Date: Thu, 30-Jul-87 02:40:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: trwspf.361
Posted: Thu Jul 30 02:40:29 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Aug-87 11:01:44 EDT
References: <8707150750.AA18086@unisoft.UNISOFT>
Reply-To: dragon@trwspf.UUCP (Roger Vossler)
Organization: TRW - Data Systems Lab., Redondo Beach, CA
Lines: 39
Summary: World's First Supercomputer Kit

In article <8707150750.AA18086@unisoft.UNISOFT> doug@certes.UUCP writes:
*And if you think _that's_ fast, Sun has contracted Bipolar Integrated
*Technology to produce an ECL version of the Cypress chip, to be available in
*1989. Claimed to be 50 to 100 MIPS (the story said 100, but 50 is implied,
*so I'm not sure about that, but either way it's fast!)
*
*All three versions of the processor are to be fully compatible with each other.
*How would you like a 50 MIP board plugged into your Amiga??? Even the currently
*available 12 MIP $4500 board sure beats the $39,900 for a Sun 4. Although of
*course the Sun comes with Unix and a high resolution screen, while the Amiga
*does not.

A buddy of mine in Provo, UT who is Pres of an outfit called Computer Systems
Architects, 801-374-2300, makes a Parallel Transputer Series product line
which has T414-15 or T800-20 Transputer chips glued to PC Add-in boards which
would fit in an A2000 or PC expansion box. A starter kit containing one
Transputer and a copy of the Occam Development System sells for about
$3,500. The nice thing about this Transputer stuff is that it is scalable
up to a 256 Transputer configuration which features 256 MBytes of RAM,
384 MFLOPS (64-bit floating point), 2,000 Mips, and about a Gigabyte/sec
of I/O bandwidth. This much action is kinda pricey, namely, about $560K
(with 20 MHz T800-20s installed) which is still cheap for this kinda
firepower. Not bad for an A2000 coprocessor. 8-) If anyone is interested,
my buddy's name is Duane Call and would like to hear from people interested
in this kind of computing power.

Actually, the Transputer technology could go well past 256 Transputers, but
the 256 Transputer configuration fits well into a 5 foot, 19 inch rack.

BTW: the $3,500 starter kit is no slouch, either. The T800 produces about
10 MIPS from 20 MHz and, surprisingly, runs a bunch of benchmarks faster
than the Fairchild Clipper chip. The starter kit has created a lot of
interest among university types who want something like an A2000 with a
reasonable amount of number crunching abilities.
-- 
-- Roger A. Vossler
   TRW, Bldg O2-1395, One Space Park, Redondo Beach, CA 90278
   BIX: rvossler      UseNet: dragon@trwspf.UUCP
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