26 Jul
1999
26 Jul
'99
8:41 a.m.
On Fri, 23 Jul 1999 23:35:48 +0100 (BST) Tony Duell
<ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
I'm an ex-INMOS person who subsequently worked with
transputers in the "Real World". We used them in a
sonar system for real-time data acquisition, control
and signal processing. They were arranged in a 12
processor pipeline with two extra T222s for RS232
I/O. Half the system was in a pressure vessel and
the other half in a rack, connected by 500m of
optical-fibre in the tow-cable. For a photo, have
a look at:
http://www.gifford.co.uk/~coredump/sonar.htm
and for the smaller, deck-mounted version, see:
http://www.submetrix.co.uk/isis100ser.html
The top half of the rack holds a B300 ethernet
gateway which was used to connect the transputers
to the host SparcStation.
I could go on about the hazards of building
underwater parallel computers, and the effect
of salt water on them, but that gets a bit
off-topic! :-)
--
John Honniball
Email: John.Honniball(a)uwe.ac.uk
University of the West of England
Despite all
this my knowledge of what a transputer is hasn't greatly
improved. It would be interesting to have a discussion as to it's
archetecture and all.
OK, here's a very brief introduction. The first paragraph in the
Transputer data book is
'A transputer is a microcomputer with its own local memory and with links
for connecting one transputer to another'.