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Author Topic: Any Transputer boards still out there?  (Read 2677 times)

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Offline mousehouseTopic starter

Any Transputer boards still out there?
« on: October 17, 2011, 01:18:22 PM »
I remember "back in the days" reading advertisements of Transputer boards for the Amiga - basically hitting us a little earlier than the DSP-religion. I could not ever hope to afford one ;-)

I came across this page: http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/prototypes/transputer.html and was wondering if anybody has one of these board still around? Curious as to heir operation, interfacing with AmigaOS, etc...
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Offline Xanxi

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Re: Any Transputer boards still out there?
« Reply #1 on: October 17, 2011, 02:21:14 PM »
I do not understand what is the purpose of those boards. Could you explain?
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Offline bloodline

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Re: Any Transputer boards still out there?
« Reply #2 on: October 17, 2011, 02:24:15 PM »
Quote from: Xanxi;663832
I do not understand what is the purpose of those boards. Could you explain?
It's a massively parallel coprocessing unit... I guess like an early modern GPU, though far less specialised...
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Offline eliyahu

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Re: Any Transputer boards still out there?
« Reply #3 on: October 17, 2011, 03:06:28 PM »
@thread

atari rulz!

sorry. couldn't resist. :lol:

-- eliyahu
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Offline jj

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Re: Any Transputer boards still out there?
« Reply #4 on: October 17, 2011, 03:34:06 PM »
Whys is that better different to the boards on the Amiga link ?
 
Sorry can't resist.  Atari sucked balls, Amiga ruled. :)
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Offline ncafferkey

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Re: Any Transputer boards still out there?
« Reply #5 on: October 17, 2011, 06:01:40 PM »
I have a PC ISA card version. User manual: http://www.transputer.net/mg/b008ug2/b008ug2.html
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Offline Xanxi

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Re: Any Transputer boards still out there?
« Reply #6 on: October 17, 2011, 06:28:01 PM »
Quote from: bloodline;663833
It's a massively parallel coprocessing unit... I guess like an early modern GPU, though far less specialised...


And what can we do with this thing?
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Offline mousehouseTopic starter

Re: Any Transputer boards still out there?
« Reply #7 on: October 17, 2011, 06:44:08 PM »
A basic transputer was able to achieve a high number of computations per second as it wa specifically designed for parallel computational tasks. For example in image processing, the same calculation is applied to each pixel or area, which can be done in a parallel fashion. This nicely complements generic CPU's such as the 030 that was the state of the art at the time. Some boards took 8 of these transputer chips it seems.

DSP's are different but the fact that Commodore played with the idea of including it in the AA3000 shows they also investigated the option to include an extra coprocessor for specific tasks...

My question comes from curiosity. Have never seen such a board for the Amiga even though it appears there were different ones.
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Offline Zac67

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Re: Any Transputer boards still out there?
« Reply #8 on: October 17, 2011, 07:09:27 PM »
The transputer was the Amiga of CPU architectures: years ahead of its competition, a high-performance-by-simple-design approach, highly influental on future developments and extremely cool - but sadly, nearly forgotten today...

btw: did you know that AmigaDOS (the DOS part in AmigaOS) was ported from TRIPOS which was also developed on to become HeliOS, the transputer OS?
« Last Edit: October 17, 2011, 07:14:34 PM by Zac67 »
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Offline salax54

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Re: Any Transputer boards still out there?
« Reply #9 on: October 17, 2011, 09:47:56 PM »
Yup, i know of at least two individuals who happen to have a transputer board for the Amiga. Oh, wait, i happen to have the one of the two.. lol
A better reading: http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=5466
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Offline mousehouseTopic starter

Re: Any Transputer boards still out there?
« Reply #10 on: October 18, 2011, 05:50:22 AM »
Wow, thanks for the link - nice card! I read through the complete thread first, I'm curious as to what you were able to achieve with it!
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Offline matthey

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Re: Any Transputer boards still out there?
« Reply #11 on: October 18, 2011, 06:40:37 AM »
Quote from: Zac67;663862
The transputer was the Amiga of CPU architectures: years ahead of its competition, a high-performance-by-simple-design approach, highly influential on future developments and extremely cool - but sadly, nearly forgotten today...


The parallelism of the transputer may have been influential for superscalarity, SIMD, multi-cores, multi-threading and cluster computing. I wouldn't exactly say those are forgotten ;).
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Offline Zac67

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Re: Any Transputer boards still out there?
« Reply #12 on: October 18, 2011, 07:40:01 AM »
Quote from: matthey;663930
The parallelism of the transputer may have been influential for superscalarity, SIMD, multi-cores, multi-threading and cluster computing. I wouldn't exactly say those are forgotten ;).


The influences are there, of course. I was referring to the the chips themselves. ;)
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