Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!ucbvax!hplabs!pyramid!cbmvax!daveh From: daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Whay has commodore droped the transputer Message-ID: <4602@cbmvax.UUCP> Date: 30 Aug 88 20:28:01 GMT References: <821@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu> Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA Lines: 42 in article <821@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu>, vkr@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu (Vidhyanath K. Rao) says: > I thought that the point of the transputer was 'painless' parallel > processing. Do RISC chips include this as a matter of course? Painless is a relative term. The transputer is designed for loosely coupled parallel processing by virtue of some serial links available in each chip. Transputer chips typically sport 4 links each, so each one can connect to 4 other Transputers or link based devices relatively painlessly. And the Transputer software model is designed to help facilitate this multiprocessing in that you don't really care whether several tasks are running on the same or on different machines. At least, that's the theory. There are some problems with it. It's pointless to try and build a tightly coupled multiprocessing system with Transputers. They don't support MMUs, and they're not all that fast on their own (in the range of a plain 68020). Many of the newer RISC and CISC machines will allow you to build very painless tightly-coupled multiprocessor system. A tightly coupled architecture doesn't extend to N as does a loosely coupled system, but being tightly coupled doesn't prevent you from handling loosely coupled concepts as well. A serial link that works just as well as the Transputer link could certainly be an add-on to any microprocessor system; that's to a great deal what you're going to get in a LAN anyway, and there are LANs that go faster than Transputer links. > Of course hypercube and such are for a limited market. Perhaps what one > may want is to use the Amiga as a front end to such beasts (?). That seems to be the way Transputer folks, mainly in Europe, are planning it. > -Nath > vkr@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu (I'm not associated with any Transputer projects at Commodore; I work on 32 bit 680x0 systems). -- Dave Haynie "The 32 Bit Guy" Commodore-Amiga "The Crew That Never Rests" {ihnp4|uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: D-DAVE H BIX: hazy "I can't relax, 'cause I'm a Boinger!"