21 Jul
1999
21 Jul
'99
2:39 p.m.
>
> Yes that us true. The T801 had several additional "features" compared to
> the T805, but instruction wise, it didn't have any of the debugging
> instructions
> (plus some additional operators). The T801 was an experimental piece as
far
Were they ever shipped? I know _I've_ got a couple somewhere, but then I
have some odd Transputer stuff....
Yes they were shipped and ran very well.
They were an updated version of the basic T800 with as you say an
optimised for static ram memory interface ie demultiplexed.
as I am concerned. The T805 is the top-of-the-line "classic" transputer.
And
I dont consider the T801 as classic.
Oh, come on. It's closely related to the T800 - the main difference is
the memory interface. Same link spec, same-ish instruction set, etc.
I can understand not calling the T9000 a 'classic Transputer' -- it's
very different to the T2/T4/T8 range. But the T801? No, I have to group
that one with the other T8's
-tony
The T9 is maybe not a classic Transputer but the ones that work run
ok !
Using a little board (size 2) on a B008 you can get em to talk to
"classic" Trannies
Kenny
21 Jul
21 Jul
4:10 p.m.
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10:32 p.m.
At 02:10 AM 7/22/99 +0100, you wrote:
snip
I've never worked with T9000s, but they look nice
chips from the
databooks that I have. But although they are clearly related to the
T2/T4/T8 series, there are enough differences that I could consider
calling them 'non-classic'. It's up to you, though.
-tony
Well, I never worked with T9K processors either, but I do distinctly
remember my awe-turned-revulsion several years ago when the reality
of the T9K became clear. (This is visceral from memory - if you
need details I'll have to get out my T9 books.)
Many years ago (in the heyday of the T4 and T8) I co-authored a C
compiler (Logical Systems) for the T2, T4 and T8 processors. I've
hacked a lot of code over the years - even written a couple of other
C (and weirder) compilers, and the Transputer was one of the most
elegant machines I ever wrote code for. (I also liked the National
320xx machines, but they never were fast enough to compete with
anything real - but that's another story.)
From a compiler-writer's standpoint, the elegance of the T8 (and family)
was a dream. (Thought the variable-length instructions and it's impact
on optimization was a bit of a hassle, but the compiler got to at least
push the "jump" optimization off to the linker and that wasn't my job!)
I attended two (maybe the last two) Transputer User's Group conventions,
and in the first of these, everyone was abuzz with news of the T9s.
But the chips were delayed and delayed and by the time of the second
convention, many of the "ooohs" had turned into "ewww" (the sound one
makes involuntarily when driving past a dead skunk on the highway.)
Later when doing a little consulting to users of T8s, I did a small
job for a large wall-street company that wanted to move a process they
were running overnight on their "big expensive" IBM mainframe and place
it on a small farm of T8s. After working out a process for distributing
the computation (a BIG matrix cruncher) over about 16 T8s, a trip was
made to the customer's site. We merged our software and started a "test
case" before going to lunch. However, it finished almost immediately
(about 5 minutes.) We thought "oh crap.". However we looked over the
results and it had produced the correct results. The "test" was a run
that had previously taken several hours on their IBM mainframe.
This was on a bunch of 20mhz processors (if I recall) so the net performance
of this SIMD-like program was the equivalent of nearly 320 mhz, since
all processors were just about as busy as they could be. 320mhz computation
10 years ago was a big deal!
And debugging for me was easy: my personal work station only had 4 T8s, but
the executable module was THE SAME as one that could run on 100 T8s. More
processors, more links and each processor got a small set of data to work
on.
Sorry for the spillage - I love Transputers and feel they are an important
piece of computer history in spite of their rather short "mainstream" life.
Gary
11:08 p.m.
Gary wrote:
Well, I never worked with T9K processors either, but I
do distinctly
remember my awe-turned-revulsion several years ago when the reality
of the T9K became clear. (This is visceral from memory - if you
need details I'll have to get out my T9 books.)
I attended two (maybe the last two) Transputer
User's Group conventions,
and in the first of these, everyone was abuzz with news of the T9s.
But the chips were delayed and delayed and by the time of the second
convention, many of the "ooohs" had turned into "ewww" (the sound
one
makes involuntarily when driving past a dead skunk on the highway.)
But now I'm wondering even more than before -- what exactly did you hate
about the T9 series? You've only piqued my curiosity.
Sorry for the spillage - I love Transputers and feel
they are an important
piece of computer history in spite of their rather short "mainstream" life.
I can't speak for everybody but I think this discussion is interesting (and
on topic). The design is novel and the allure is certainly high too. Maybe
nobody else on the list has the fantasy of getting a really super-speedy
computer system (with well-documented software) but I do, and the Transputer
series sounds pretty close to that ideal.
Now if only the boards that keep popping up for sale were in the US! I get
the impression they're all in England.
-- Derek
11:27 p.m.
At 01:08 AM 7/22/99 -0700, you wrote:
Gary wrote:
Well, I see that I need to be objective, so I'll get out my references
and come up with some points.
"I'll be back..."
Gary
Well, I never worked with T9K processors either,
but I do distinctly
remember my awe-turned-revulsion several years ago when the reality
of the T9K became clear. (This is visceral from memory - if you
need details I'll have to get out my T9 books.)
I attended two (maybe the last two) Transputer
User's Group conventions,
and in the first of these, everyone was abuzz with news of the T9s.
But the chips were delayed and delayed and by the time of the second
convention, many of the "ooohs" had turned into "ewww" (the sound
one
makes involuntarily when driving past a dead skunk on the highway.)
But now I'm wondering even more than before -- what exactly did you hate
about the T9 series? You've only piqued my curiosity. -- Derek
22 Jul
22 Jul
3:45 a.m.
Derek Peschel wrote:
Now if only the boards that keep popping up for sale were in the US! I get
the impression they're all in England.
Well, I am in the US. We have an office in London, so I send all the boards
there. Whenever somebody goes down to London from New York, they are
kind enough to bring to me. Remember, trannies were basically popular in
Europe as opposed to the US. There were sprinkles of the transputer scattered
about in the US.
Ram
--
,,,,
/'^'\
( o o )
-oOOO--(_)--OOOo-------------------------------------
| Ram Meenakshisundaram
| Senior Software Engineer
| OpenLink Financial Inc
| .oooO Phone: (516) 227-6600 x267
| ( ) Oooo. Email: rmeenaks(a)olf.com
---\ (----( )--------------------------------------
\_) ) /
(_/
10:44 a.m.
Ram wrote:
Well, I am in the US. We have an office in London, so
I send all the boards
there. Whenever somebody goes down to London from New York, they are
kind enough to bring to me. Remember, trannies were basically popular in
Europe as opposed to the US. There were sprinkles of the transputer scattered
about in the US.
Do you still have boards available? I was hoping it might be possible to
get some in the US without paying shipping from England.
-- Derek
10:57 a.m.
Derek Peschel wrote:
Ram wrote:
Sorry, but I am not selling anything as this is the only thing I collect. The
post I sent out was posted to comp.sys.transputer and I knew several people
on this list wanted trannies. Shipping stuff from London to the US is very
expensive. That is why I get someone to get it for me. Unfortunately, this
could take some time to get here as travelling back and forth is a bit rare.
Currently, I have a parsytec xplorer, several transputer books, and some trams
and B008s in London. So far, I havent been able to get them to the US :-(
What I will do is keep an eye out for some and send a post here. This recent one
is a pretty big collection that is being sold. The biggest I seen in a while.
Ram
--
,,,,
/'^'\
( o o )
-oOOO--(_)--OOOo-------------------------------------
| Ram Meenakshisundaram
| Senior Software Engineer
| OpenLink Financial Inc
| .oooO Phone: (516) 227-6600 x267
| ( ) Oooo. Email: rmeenaks(a)olf.com
---\ (----( )--------------------------------------
\_) ) /
(_/
Well, I am in the US. We have an office in
London, so I send all the boards
there. Whenever somebody goes down to London from New York, they are
kind enough to bring to me. Remember, trannies were basically popular in
Europe as opposed to the US. There were sprinkles of the transputer scattered
about in the US.
Do you still have boards available? I was hoping it might be possible to
get some in the US without paying shipping from England.
6:16 a.m.
I can't speak for everybody but I think this
discussion is interesting (and
on topic). The design is novel and the allure is certainly high too. Maybe
nobody else on the list has the fantasy of getting a really super-speedy
computer system (with well-documented software) but I do, and the Transputer
series sounds pretty close to that ideal.
Well, I have fantasies as well, but so far all of the _reasonable_ supers
and minisupers are out of my reach.
Also, keep in mind that there is more to life than Transputers.
Specifically, a certain MasPar out West - maybe gone now. The 1989-95
timeframe was the "golden age" for MPP systems, with a bunch of vendors
and a slew of architectures - if you can grab one, DO IT! Spares and
documentation tends to be a problem, but at least with MPP systems, most
of the boards are the same in each computer, so if one breaks, you still
have others to compare to.
Now if only the boards that keep popping up for sale
were in the US! I get
the impression they're all in England.
One of the reasons is that Transputers were more or less abandoned in the
States as other architectures popped up. The Inmos chips were a good
first start, and certainly deserve a place in the "Chip Hall of Fame",
but they were also designed when MPP systems were still very immature. As
the computer engineers figured out out to get multiple processors to talk
in an efficient manner, learning from mistakes of the past (or sometimes
trial and error!), better systems were developed and the Transputers
retired.
No. I am not slamming Transputers...
William Donzelli
aw288(a)osfn.org
9:59 a.m.
Chuck McManis wrote:
Ok, so why are they called "Trams" anyway?
--Chuck
trams stands for "TRAnsputer ModuleS". It is basically a transputer
with some memory. It connects to a TRAM motherboard that has slots
to connect the trams to. It is like a lego kit. TI had a similar
technology
modelled after the trams call tims (TI Modules, IIRC). It got connected
to
TIM motherboards. The trams came in different sizes depending on how
many
slots it took in the mother board. size-1 trams occupied one slot.
size-2 trams
occupied two slots, size-4 trams occupied 4 slots, and the biggest
I seen were
size-8 trams that occupied 8 slots. Now not all slots were actually
used.
So, you can stack other trams on top of existing trams as long as the
slot wasnt
used. Here is a brief, but good introductions to trams:
http://www.sundance.com/transputer/tram.htm
Ram
--
,,,,
/'^'\
( o o )
-oOOO--(_)--OOOo-------------------------------------
| Ram Meenakshisundaram
| Senior Software Engineer
| OpenLink Financial Inc
| .oooO Phone: (516) 227-6600 x267
| ( ) Oooo. Email: rmeenaks(a)olf.com
---\ (----( )--------------------------------------
\_) ) /
(_/
12:52 p.m.
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12:16 p.m.
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3:42 a.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
Is it not identical software wise ?
Mine are....or seem to be ;-)
Oh, most likely it is. I don't like to be definite about something like
this as somebody will point out an undocumented test instruction that
does different things :-)
Here is the thing. I dont think it is chip compatible like the rest of the
32-bit
transputers. You can not replace the T800 with a T801 or a T414 to a T801, etc.
That is why I dont call it a 'classic'. You are right, it is instruction
compatible
with the T800. I basically call it a mutant T800 :-) It is a new "lineage" in
the transputer
tree.
Ram
--
,,,,
/'^'\
( o o )
-oOOO--(_)--OOOo-------------------------------------
| Ram Meenakshisundaram
| Senior Software Engineer
| OpenLink Financial Inc
| .oooO Phone: (516) 227-6600 x267
| ( ) Oooo. Email: rmeenaks(a)olf.com
---\ (----( )--------------------------------------
\_) ) /
(_/
as I am
concerned. The T805 is the top-of-the-line "classic" transputer.
And
I dont consider the T801 as classic.
Oh, come on. It's closely related to the T800 - the main difference is
the memory interface. Same link spec, same-ish instruction set, etc.
10:28 a.m.
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9133
days inactive
9134
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14 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
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ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
aw288＠osfn.org -
cmcmanis＠mcmanis.com -
dpeschel＠u.washington.edu -
go＠ao.com -
kenny＠kinnes.demon.co.uk -
rmeenaks＠olf.com