Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!yale!cmcl2!lanl!jxdl
From: jxdl@lanl.gov (Jerry DeLapp)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.transputer
Subject: Re: What makes Transputer interesting
Summary: Cheap, fast, powerful, cheap, cheap, (I like cheap)
Message-ID: <6048@lanl.gov>
Date: 15 Nov 88 17:38:58 GMT
References: <20000001@ugun21>
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 63

In article <20000001@ugun21>, josef@ugun21.UUCP writes:
[stuff deleted...]
> I have had a discussion with my boss, and he posed this question:
> 
> What distinguishes a Transputer from any other processor, especially
> if I take a, let's say 68030 or 32532, add 4 communication channels
> and write software to do processor-processor communication?
> What makes a Transputer so interesting?
> 
> 		Josef Moellers

Well, you might say that the most interesting thing is that the
transputer does everything that his gob of 68xxx and communications
hardware and software does in one chip! Just the software effort
involved in the "roll your own" version would be an ugly cost.

Plus:

The transputer is fast (about the equivalent of a vax or sun 3 now,
and getting faster).

The communications are very fast, have very low startup overheads,
and operate without any need of the CPU after setup.
This is not easy to accomplish in discrete silicon with software.
In addition, the technology used for the communications allows for
long (about 30-40 feet) cable runs.

Memory management of the channels vs processor requirements are done
on chip.

The (T800) transputer has on-chip floating-point support.

The context-switch time on a transputer makes the 68xxx look like
a pig.

The transputer is RISC technology. The small instruction set means
that it's fairly easy to port compilers to it (although INMOS seems
to be real stodgy about realizing that the real world wants C and
FORTRAN).

INMOS has good plans for the future growth and enhancement of the chip
series. (Now if they'd just do the same with the software).

OPINION: The transputer will probably define the future of parallel
computing for the next 5 years or so IF IF IF INMOS will wake up
and realize that the OCCAM language is a significant hindrance to
acceptance of their product in the US market. OCCAM is a language
best suited to CS weenies (BTW IR1, so I can say that :-).

P.S. I am not an INMOS employee. I have had significant experience
with the transputer in a large scale parallel machine.
The transputer hardware works well, the software sucks rocks.
OCCAM is the single biggest roadblock to general acceptance of
transputer based systems. Most people that I introduced to the
OCCAM language system said "Come back when you have 'real' languages".
I am certain that we will not solve the problems of broad acceptance
and understanding of parallel processing's capabilities as long as
OCCAM is the context.
-- 
_    /| The opinions here are my own, and even I don't agree with me :-)
\'o.O'  I am not an employee of LANL, I just use their computers.
=(___)= I stole the .sig file, but I did not shoot no deputeeee.
   U    Bill sez: AAAAK! PHHHT!   jxdl@lanl.gov