Transputers (was: Re: CCC : Atari machines)

From: Doug Spence <ds_spenc_at_alcor.concordia.ca>
Date: Fri Aug 15 05:59:30 1997

On Thu, 7 Aug 1997 starling_at_umr.edu wrote:

> > OK, here is the complete listing from the CCC of the machines made by
> > Atari. Please consult your favorite references and confirm/deny or
> > complete the missing data.
>
> Missing Atari Computer:
> Atari ATW Transputer -- They only made like 5,000 of these and I WANT ONE!!!!

The document you mention below says that "only 350 machines were made (50
prototypes and 300 production machines or, according to documents from
Atari, 100 prototypes and 250 production machines)." [Translation my own
and may be inexact.]

Definitely a rare beast!

> Now that I have my Lisa, this is my next Holy Grail. It was Atari's
> stab at the unix workstation market. It was a multiprocessor setup
> that had a 68000 as some sort of main brain and then you plugged in
> modules that had Transputer T800 processors on them, max 12. It ran
> some nifty OS called Helios and had semi-ok graphics capabilities.

This sounds very much like Commodore's ill-fated transputer project. It
also ran an OS called Helios, and used T800 processors. There's an
article on Commodore's transputer project in AmigoTimes V1.2. AmigoTimes
never liked putting dates on their magazines (dammit) but it's probably
from the around same time-frame as the Atari machine. There is a 1988
date mentioned in the article, and on the transputer board in the picture.

Actually, the web article you directed us to states about the Atari
machine that "it was first presented in November 1987 at COMDEX in Las
Vegas under the name ABAQ", so it looks like the Atari machine was
earlier.

I've seen someone on Usenet say that they have some Commodore transputer
boards, and I think he said that the project was cancelled after problems
with the person or people who were writing the Helios operating system or
something. Also the T-800 chips were never cheap enough to use in
products for the kinds of markets Atari and Commodore generally looked
for. I don't know how long ago it was that I saw that - it could still be
on Deja News.


A few quotes from the AmigoTimes article, "The Amiga Supercomputer" by
Ernest N. Nagy:

.
.
.
"The operating system that will control the transputer chips, is called
HELIOS. HELIOS is being written in 'C' by Perry Helion, specifically for
use with the transputer and should be available by the fall of 1988."
.
.
.

"To comply with existing Amiga graphics standards, Xwindows will be used
as the graphics interface. The Xwindow environment will be running
through a shell command interpreter very similar to the UNIX shell."
.
.
.

"The advantage of a transputer outweighs its disadvantages. Each
transputer has local RAM, the T-800 has an onboard floating point
processor working at 1.2 MFlops and each chip (T-800) is rated at 10 mips.
Each transputer communicates on an independent hardware level via four
inter-processor communication links. Because transputers are
self-contained and work in parallel, they have no bus bandwidth
limitations, therefore 'n' transputers means 'n' times the performance.
Unlike conventional CPUs linked together, transputers have linear growth
potential.
   Each Amiga can be further expanded by up to four independent
multitransputer cards. Each multitransputer card will contain four
transputers (either the TMS414 or TMS800) with up to 4MB of on-board
memory. These multitransputer cards will fit into the AT slot and an
Amiga 2000 will be capable of supporting up to 17 transputers; providing a
total of 170 mips in processing speed and 20 MFlops. The AT slots just
provide the power to the board. An Amiga with a root transputer and one
transputer board forms a parallel pipe configuration and two or more
transputer boards allows two-dimensional movement capabilities from chip
to chip. If 17 transputers is not enough power, then workstation
superclusters can be implemented for very high performance application
needs. To allow for full speed server code transfers, the workstation
must be able to transfer data to and from the transputer in DMA mode.
This will require a new device driver in the Amiga OS which will be
optimized for HELIOS type data transfers. Presently link techniques are
being developed that will allow data transfers between stations, at a rate
of 20Mbit/s. There is a theoretical limit to the amount of transputers
that can be controlled by HELIOS; it stands untested at about 30
workstations (or 500 transputers), but it may be more."
.
.
.

Then the article goes on to an interview with Dieter Priess, General
Manager of Engineering at Braunschweig:

.
.
.
"AMIGOTIMES: We have heard about transputers before, but never with
regards to the Amiga. The first we really heard of it, after INMOS
brought it out, was after Jack Tramiel (Atari) announced that he is going
to bring out a transputer based computer to compete with the success of
the Amiga. When we got wind about a possible Amiga transputer expansion
board, it was great news.

PREISS: He is using the same operating system (HELIOS) as we are, so
nobody is actually ahead of the timeframe, or behind. Except that we have
some more plans with HELIOS than I have seen in his announcement at the
moment.
  His machine has a closed architecture, and I think it contains 12
transputers. He thinks this is the kind of workstation that the future
may need. We've found that limiting a computer to a given number of
transputers is a violation of the transputer concept itself. Our policy
has been, in the past, to keep machines as flexible and as open as
possible. I really think this concept has to be applied to each expansion
that we create for the Amiga. So both HELIOS, as well as the hardware,
have to be open enough to support everything that is required by the
demand of the user and not by our offer.

AMIGOTIMES: Will the transputer board contain four transputers on the main
board?

PREISS: No, there are four transputers on the expansion boards that go
into the PC slots; since we want to keep the Amiga slots free. The PC
slots just supply the power for those boards, they do not use any bus
signals. This means if you have four free PC slots in the system, you can
add up to four expansion boards (16 transputers). Combined with the root
transputer board in the Amiga slot, you end up with a total of 17
transputers."

.
.
.

"We personally saw the transputer root board working, so it's not
'vaporware', but HELIOS is not ready yet and until it is, the transputer
board will continue to be improved. The entire system should be ready by
the fall and hopefully be ready for commercial sale just before the
Christmas shopping rush (the first week of December)."
.
.
.


It's a big article, and it's got a photo of the root board, and on it can
be read the text:

TRANSPUTER BOARD A2000 MADE IN W. GERMANY (BSW) (C)1988 COMMODORE


Anyway, that's enough typing for tonight on such a vapourous (and
not even quite classic) subject. :)


Doug Spence
ds_spenc_at_alcor.concordia.ca
Received on Fri Aug 15 1997 - 05:59:30 BST

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