Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!A.ISI.EDU!ENGLE
From: ENGLE@A.ISI.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.sys.transputer
Subject: Where are the workstations.
Message-ID: <[A.ISI.EDU]20-Feb-90.11:30:35.ENGLE>
Date: 20 Feb 90 16:30:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 24

Why has the transputer not really caught on in the workstation market?
I may be speaking from a characteristicly north american perspective
but one would expect there to be a glut of parallel processing workstations
out there.  I think we all see the potential, which may imply that some
really smart people have seen the potential long ago.  In the U.S. the only
transputer based workstation available is the XTM from Cogent Research.

Its getting difficult to buy the argument that parallel processing is 
relatively new or that the transputer is just coming out.  Is the add-in
card market to blame for positioning the chip as a co-processor?  Is
Inmos at fault for not promoting the chip, or making it too pricy, or
being British, or for not coming to market with reasonable software 
support, or for just plain not making a good chip?  (Some of this
is tongue in cheek but I think the implication is valid)

I meet wild eyed entrepeneurs all the time who envision some tremendous
systems.  Here in the Bay Area we take such people seriously because
on our way to work we pass buildings inhabited by employees of companies
started by wild eyed entrepeneurs.  There are nice cars in the parking 
lots.  

Where are the transputer workstations?

Steven Engle