Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!think!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!maths.bath.ac.UK!jap
From: jap@maths.bath.ac.UK
Newsgroups: comp.sys.transputer
Subject: Sun-hosted Transputers?
Message-ID: <8806190641.AA20380@tcgould.TN.CORNELL.EDU>
Date: 18 Jun 88 19:58:35 GMT
References: <1913@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
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I am using a box made by a company called Meiko (who hail from Bristol
in the UK).  It was started by a bunch of people from the original
transputer design team.  The organisation is that you get an interface
card which slots into the Sun card cage and then run a link cable into
the Meiko box (called the Computing Surface).  They make a number of
boards with different configurations depending on what you want to do.
We currently have a localhost board (interface at the other end), an
early version masstor board (intended to be used for disk interface
(SCSI)) with a T4 and 8Mb and a compute board with 4 * T8, each with
4Mb.  There is also a graphics board with 24bit (each) RGB output.  In
the works, I hear, are a compute board with 8Mb per processor and an
ether interface board.  The hardware seems quite well made.

The software is reliable but occasionally shows limitations.
Personally, I just don't like the TDS interface.  Debugging support is
abysmal in this environment too - if it does not work it just goes
dead.

Nevertheless, we have managed to get KCL working quite happily (single
processor) in about one and half man-weeks and T4 performance is bit
slower than a Sun 3/160 and T8 is about 20% faster than a 3/160.  The
benchmark we used was OPS5 running some consistency tests and an
extended version of the (canonical) monkey and bananas problem.  If we
can find the time we will probably put the Reduce algebra system up
too.

The Sun hosted C compiler (from Renishaw Controls) is not very good,
and I would expect better performance from almost any other C
compiler.  A promising candidate is the Norcroft C compiler, which
produces very high quality code on other machines and which Perihelion
(see below) are using, but that is ANSI only.

We have had various versions of the Helios (Perihelion) file server
working between the Sun and the Meiko and this promises to offer a
much more satisfactory working environment - the touch and feel, to
you and to your programs, are Un*x.

The other project here is the porting of Portable Standard Lisp to the
transputer to support existing work on concurrent processing for a
project (called Concurrent Processing for Advanced Simulation) done in
conjunction with the Rand Corporation.

--Julian.