[HN Gopher] Amiga Transputer Project
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Amiga Transputer Project
Author : nickt
Score : 49 points
Date : 2022-04-30 23:07 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bambi-amiga.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bambi-amiga.co.uk)
| Instantix wrote:
| I didn't know that transputer were made for the Amiga. Some years
| ago I did some research about the Atari one and the conclusion
| was: inefficacy. The serial link linking each transputer being a
| bottleneck. And more transputers you add, more complexity in
| tasks distribution you add so the performance curve was
| flattening.
|
| I'm curious to know if multi-core processors were designed with
| this lesson in mind.
| justinlloyd wrote:
| The Atari Transputer system was unfortunately hampered by a
| number of design factors. Transputers did have a bottleneck
| with inter-chip communication, but generally you programmed to
| the transputer architecture, rather than a general purpose
| computer architecture. This meant you broke up your data in to
| chunks, and then let each transputer do its own thing, and then
| regroup at the end, perhaps using a separate transputer to
| reassemble the data, much like you would with a modern GPU. You
| could treat your functions either like a pipeline or like a
| matrix, but you had to create the algorithm to work with that
| architecture. Part of my job was showing companies who were
| deploying transputer based systems how to port their work to
| this architecture. That said, the transputer to transputer
| communications bus was pretty optimal, for the time, compared
| to how most multiprocessor computers handled their work.
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| The funny frontpage coincidences that make my day.
| https://i.imgur.com/u1acjVW.png
|
| Is this transputer also bleaker than you thought? :)
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| I remember back then the Transputer for the Atari ST, always
| wanted one. It was my first contact with multi processors. As an
| Amiga owner back then I didn't know there was a transputer
| project for Amigas.
| zoenolan wrote:
| Related. The Atari Transputer Workstation previously [1][2]
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12995277
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26488501
| dboreham wrote:
| I think the title should be something like "Add-on Transputer
| boards for the Amiga" because there is no singular "project" in
| tfa.
|
| fwiw I worked at Inmos during this era and there were many many
| such add-on boards built for pretty much every kind of computer,
| typically similar to the reference designs we sold for
| development purposes on the PC/ISA bus. They all suffered from
| the same problem which was lack of useful applications. They
| solved the problem "how do I get some transputers connected to my
| XXX computer?", but not "how do I do something useful with
| that?".
| justinlloyd wrote:
| Fun fact, I worked on a transputer board for both Amiga and PC
| way back when. It was doing real time video processing for both
| machine vision and also broadcast solutions.
|
| For the PC version I wrote the SCSI "drivers" that made the
| storage talk to transputer card, and also the API that let the
| transputer board do the video capture and processing for both
| machine vision and a broadcast capable non-linear video editing
| system. Just the lower level API, not the NLVE system itself.
| That was a different team. For the Amiga I did the video capture
| API, that grabbed frames and fed them to the storage system.
| Which also let me complete my Bachelor's thesis/final year
| project. The Amiga design was a lot easier to work with than the
| PC. I recall the reason for this was that PC was trying to
| satisfy multiple operating systems; DOS, OS/2 Warp, Windows 3.1,
| some old version of UNIX, but the Amiga card just supported,
| IIRC, the AmigaOS.
|
| I forget the name of the company now, "Video something-
| something?", or "Vision something-something?" they had an office
| (one of several) in Bristol, UK, though I think the company was
| London based.
|
| I think they may have been a subsidiary of a much larger entity.
| This was around 1991/1992, so well in to the Amiga lifespan by
| then. I had an A2000 with a quad-transputer card (though usually
| it only had two transputers in it because they were in short
| supply) on my desk.
|
| In the design, the Transputer sat in front of a chunk of spinning
| rust storage, and your PC or Amiga talked to the transputer,
| which talked to the hard drives for you. It had multiple video in
| & out for camera feeds and a mind-blowing (for the time) amount
| of RAM per transputer card. 8MB or 16MB I recall. Enough to hold
| several uncompressed frames of video. Multiple cards would have
| given you 32MB or 64MB of RAM, which was almost unheard of in
| anything costing less than $50,000.
|
| The intention was to have a PC or an Amiga do the equivalent of a
| high-end broadcast capable machine for just 10,000 UKP (in 1990's
| money), handling, I think, up to eight or 12 video streams
| simultaneously, doing various video effects and manipulation.
| Unfortunately the project sold a few units, and was only ever
| really a glorified demo of "coming soon" but never recouped its
| development costs and got squished after a little while.
|
| But I look it as that job lead to the opportunity to go do some
| work for SGI on the Onyx RE, where I eventually fell in love with
| an over-priced Indigo that still to this day, sits in my garage
| with its granite keyboard and monitor.
| anyfoo wrote:
| Definitely the kind of story and background I come to HN for,
| thanks.
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