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The first parallel processing chip — Parallax Forums

The first parallel processing chip

LeonLeon Posts: 7,620
edited 2010-12-24 09:03 in General Discussion
Here is an interesting account of how the first parallel processing chip, the Inmos transputer, was designed over 25 years ago:

http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/CCS/res/res32.htm#c

http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/CCS/res/res33.htm#c

I paid £400 each for a couple of T414 chips, at the time! I wire-wrapped a prototype board, with 256k of DRAM; somewhat to my surprise, it worked first time.

Comments

  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2010-12-23 01:33
    Well, there is quite a bit to read in the attachments.

    Most interesting would be in a Propeller chip could be adapted to emulate the T414 for the sake of history. Does such a project interest you?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 7,620
    edited 2010-12-23 04:04
    There isn't any point, plenty of people are still playing around with transputer hardware.
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,260
    edited 2010-12-23 09:54
    Very cool. I think we all have a soft spot for our first computer, just like first cars. I still own both, my Timex Sinclair 1000 and '67 Corvair. Gotta get those two kids together!
  • rod1963rod1963 Posts: 752
    edited 2010-12-23 10:00
    Still have my CSA T425 boards replete with Occam, parallel Modula-2 and the Ceres GUI. Very nice and innovative for it's time.

    Still can't get interested by it's so-called successor. It seems to be a throw back to the 1980's with it's memory limitations, then there's the weird I/O.
  • Invent-O-DocInvent-O-Doc Posts: 768
    edited 2010-12-23 10:30
    Interesting topic. I checked it out on wikipedia and enjoyed the read. I do vaguely remember the atari transputer workstation in the late 80s. Thanks for brining this to our attention, leon.
  • User NameUser Name Posts: 1,451
    edited 2010-12-23 12:35
    Just wait a few weeks, Doc, and he'll bring it up again. And again. And again. Must be a British pride thing.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2010-12-24 06:56
    User Name:
    Must be a British pride thing.

    Yep, I suffer from that as well:)

    However, Leon is not out of order to bring up such things here.

    The Propeller is after all a multi-core processor that encourages thinking about parallel program execution. As an MCU without any inbuilt peripheral hardware, UARTS, SPI, USB etc etc, it also promotes the idea of creating those, normally hardware, functions in software. That is "software defined silicon".

    Just so happens that these ideas are exactly what was in mind with the Transputer chip and Occam language a few decades back and being continued with "the chip that shall remain nameless" now a days.
  • davejamesdavejames Posts: 4,047
    edited 2010-12-24 09:03
    @Invent-O-Doc ...ah! Atari...my first and favorite home computer. Another example of a poorly managed company driven into obscurity!

    http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/16bits/transputer.html

    DJ
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