transputers was Re: books on programming

From: Jeff Bone (jbone@jump.net)
Date: Thu Jan 04 2001 - 14:14:07 PST


What a great architecture! I really wish the transputer had taken
off. At one point, pre-Sun's big "all the wood behind one arrowhead"
SPARC push, transputers were the best-selling RISC chips on the
planet. The ATWs were nice, but supposedly the really, really sexy
box was from Cogent Research.

Anybody on the list ever actually *use* a Cogent box? UNIX-alike
kernel, but implemented from scratch in C++, with a kernel
implementation of Linda, integrated Linda / filesystem semantics,
integrated X/NeWS server with a parallelized implementation of NeWS
(QIX?,) all running on Inmos transputers in desktop boxes, up to 8
CPUs per box, with CPU sharing over the LAN.

jb

Tony Finch wrote:

> Actually, you've pretty much reinvented the transputer here. MISC,
> memory on chip, scale the system by adding CPUs.
>
> Tony.
> --
> f.a.n.finch fanf@covalent.net dot@dotat.at
> "Perhaps on your way home you will pass someone in the dark,
> and you will never know it, for they will be from outer space."



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