Do you remember Amiga transputers?

[Gulliver]

Back in the late 80´s there was a lot of development around parallel processing hardware. These were accomplished by conecting several processor to execute one task. It was bleeding edge technology back then.

The Amiga had several transputer hardware that saw the light, but they were never popular or widespread.

http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/prototypes/transputer.html

These transputers ran an obscure operating system called Helios which was developed by Tim King (the father of Amigados). Well, Time has proven that nothing remains in the dark forever:

Helios has surfaced, and now it is open source.

http://www.geekdot.com/helios-ng

Wouldnt it be cool for the sake of geekness that someone had one of these Amiga transputer hardware, and now could restore them back to life?

[Matt_H]

Heh, I noticed this news, too. It seems to me like there was never a really good implementation of a transputer, or at least there wasn't one that showed off its true potential to home computer users. Even on the industrial/research side of things they didn't seem to gain much traction - or, rather, not to the extent noticeable by average  users/enthusiasts.

I am curious to learn how the old transputer model compares (conceptually) to our modern, multi-core, multi-processor desktop/laptop computers of today.

[salax54]

I happen to have one of the Kasmin cards, but i doubt it would have any hopes of running the Helios OS. The link you posted does indeed have the OS files, but has instructions for it running under x86 platforms. My thinking is that it's more possible to run HeliOS under Atari emulation on the Amiga than trying to port it to a native one. I would like to have an Atari ST emulator that doesn't depend on the Amiga's chipset, so i could try this on my Draco, emulating something like the ATW http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Transputer_Workstation
Although i still doubt it would work anyway...

[psxphill]

I am curious to learn how the old transputer model compares (conceptually) to our modern, multi-core, multi-processor desktop/laptop computers of today.

Multi core doesn't compare at all as it's all one one piece of silicon you can share cache etc. multi processor is closer, but I personally don't think the transputer matches up (especially not in speed).
 
The transputer was kinda like an embedded arm cpu, but too expensive to really take off. If it wasn't linked with Acorn then it would have made a more interesting choice than PowerPC (both for Apple and the Amiga PowerUp).

[Erol]

Helios has surfaced, and now it is open source.

http://www.geekdot.com/helios-ng

They still making products..  check out this link

http://www.helios.de/start.html

[trekiej]

U.S. Cybernetics? If I recall, the advertisement would make the A2000 infinitely powerful.

[trekiej]

oops