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From: ralphw@ius3.ius.cs.cmu.edu (Ralph Hyre)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.transputer
Subject: Sun-hosted Transputers?
Message-ID: <1913@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: 10 Jun 88 21:48:39 GMT
References: <8806091021.AA18234@uk.ac.ox.prg>
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Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
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Anyone have any thought or experiences on using transputers in Sun 
workstations.  I recall seeing some literature on a Sun 9U board-level 
product with around 8 T800's on it at one time, but can't recall the company.
VME 6U boards might be preferable.

The main competition around here is the WARP systolic array processor,
200 Mflops/box.  The main drawback is the lack of an easy-to-use software
development environment.

The support burden of another widly different architecture would need
to be small to even be considered, especially given the technology
window between now and the next generation of Warp (late '89), which will
have twice the performance and C compilers and such.

The Quality of C and Lisp systems needs to be comparable with the SunOS
products as well, and I suspect this might ultimately be the sticking point.

Some around here are doing neural net stuff, but mainly it's just
integer image->image transformations, and random bursts of floating point
(usually at such inopportune times as to make FP subsystems whose performance
is proportional to pipeline utilitization not as useful)

Send email, and I'll summarize to the net.

Thanks.
-- 
					- Ralph W. Hyre, Jr.

Internet: ralphw@ius2.cs.cmu.edu    Phone:(412)268-{2847,3275} CMU-{BUGS,DARK}
Amateur Packet Radio: N3FGW@W2XO, or c/o W3VC, CMU Radio Club, Pittsburgh, PA