
Transputer - simonpure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transputer
======
jbgreer
In 1988 a friend and I presented at the 3rd Conference on Hypercubes and
Concurrent Computers. We had spent the summer and fall programming an Intel
Scientific Hypercube. Fractal calculations, heat diffusion, chemical
reactions, that sort of thing. Used to take us 20 minutes a run.

We’re on the vendor display floor walking around, talking to folks, watching
demos. A guy has a board in an expansion board in his desktop computer. The
cover is off and he’s pointing out the 2 transputer chips on it. Meanwhile the
display screen is filling out a familiar drawing of a fractal. I ask how long
it took them to render the drawing. “Oh, no, it’s doing that work now.” A cute
little board readily outstripping our refrigerator sized machine back home.

I ended up talking with David May. The thing he seemed most proud of at the
moment was their floating point work. They had written a description of their
new floating point unit in Occam. They had tested and debugged it. They had
formally proved the implementation of a standard (IEEE 754?). And then they
had built the silicon.

I returned home with a set of inmos manuals. Never could get anyone back at
uni to see the potential. Sigh. Still, at the moment I knew I was truly in the
presence of the state of the art.

------
sitkack
If you are interested in Transputers you should purchase an XMOS dev kit
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMOS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMOS)
[https://www.xmos.com/](https://www.xmos.com/)

[https://www.digikey.com/products/en/development-boards-
kits-...](https://www.digikey.com/products/en/development-boards-kits-
programmers/evaluation-boards-embedded-mcu-
dsp/786?FV=-8%7C786%2C-1%7C880&quantity=0&ColumnSort=1000011&page=1&pageSize=25)

~~~
cmrdporcupine
I have an XMOS dev board sitting in a drawer basically unused since I found I
had to use their proprietary extended C dialect. But I understand they may
have fixed this since?

~~~
tjoff
You have to use their XC dialect, but it is mostly C anyway.

And you can include reglar h-files to easily link to and build regular C. With
provided macros you can have h-files which are using some XC features but
still be compatible with both XC and C files (making it easy to wrap XC code
and call it from C and vice versa).

There is also this that can use XC features from C.
[https://github.com/xmos/lib_xcore_c](https://github.com/xmos/lib_xcore_c)

But I don't find XC to be bad, and likely a much better starting point than
the library above.

The compiler is a fork from gcc from 2006 (if I remember correctly) and that
shows its age somewhat. The many protections in XC can be a bit tedious as
well.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
I had existing code written in C++. I ran it using GCC on the Parallax
Propeller instead. I had no desire to port to XC as I was trying to keep a
core of it relatively cross platform.

Of course this is just another of my unfinished hobby projects, so :-)

------
jacquesm
Transputers were and are interesting, they are the closest to a dataflow or
systolic array processor with enough power and forethought gone into their
design that you could use them for real world applications. But the MHz wars
killed all those effort and only now, that we've exhausted the easy gains does
it make sense to review the past to see what we can salvage in terms of ideas.

~~~
DonaldFisk
Transputers weren't dataflow. They were parallel processors. The Transputer
had a program counter (instruction pointer). Dataflow machines don't need one:
when an instruction has all of its inputs, it executes on the next available
processor. Only a few experimental dataflow machines were ever built, e.g. the
one at Manchester University.

~~~
greglindahl
Check out
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dataflow_programming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dataflow_programming)
\-- the word means a lot more than you've mentioned.

~~~
DonaldFisk
I've been developing a dataflow programming language, which runs on a tagged
dataflow virtual machine:
[http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/fmj/tutorials/TOC.html](http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/fmj/tutorials/TOC.html)

I'll update the link soon, as I've added several new features to the language.

~~~
greglindahl
I've worked on a ton of dataflow systems which were macro-dataflow, i.e. they
executed on conventional processors. Great programming model in many
instances.

------
TickleSteve
If you're interested in transputers, you will likely find this interesting
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Transputer_Workstation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Transputer_Workstation))

The Atari Transputer Workstation was a technological oddball of which there
were quite a few around that time.

see also:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connection_Machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connection_Machine)
and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_machine)

The 80's were a wonderful time for computer hardware...

~~~
NeedMoreTea
There was a range of transputer addons and dedicated systems all the way up to
the very pretty and very expensive Meiko Computing Surface[1] with something
like 100 (300? honestly can't remember) transputers in it. It seemed, for a
while, like they were being shoehorned into everything. There was a distinct
belief that transputers were the way the future was going. I think the
expectation was before too long everything would gain a set of transputers as
replacement to a single one thread CPU, or in addition to, much like machines
gained graphics cards.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiko_Scientific#Computing_Sur...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiko_Scientific#Computing_Surface)

Seem to remember there was once a dedicated page with pictures, could be
mistaken, but if there was it's been deleted. Such is Wikipedia "progress".

~~~
UncleSlacky
I had an encounter with a Meiko Computing Surface (64 or 128 Transputers, I
think?) around 1990, as I was studying Occam at the time. It was impressive to
watch it rendering high-res 3D fractal landscapes in real time.

~~~
linker3000
Ditto a few years before that - we had a Meiko box in the visuals R&D dept of
the flight simulator company where I was doing my electronic engineering
apprenticeship, although I didn't really get hands-on with it.

------
w0utert
I’ve always thought of the Zachtronics game TIS-100 [1] to resemble
programming an extremely simple transputer. Definitely worthwhile to try the
game, if only to find out about all new kinds of problems you run into if you
have to distribute your processing over multiple independent nodes that
communicate over serial links!

[1] [http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/](http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/)

~~~
bear8642
Feel it's more like Chuck Moore's GA144, but yes good game

------
dang
Related from 2011:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2898569](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2898569)

2014:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7591285](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7591285)

2016:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12995277](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12995277)

2018 (a bit):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18576037](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18576037)

Same Wikipedia page from 2018:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16190102](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16190102)

~~~
tiborsaas
So we can expect a new appearance on the front page in 2022 :)

------
rudolph9
I hypothesize what was really missing to make the transputer successful was a
language/compile-target to express propagators:
[https://youtu.be/nY1BCv3xn24](https://youtu.be/nY1BCv3xn24)

We are starting to see languages that could leverage such an architecture: *
[http://minikanren.org/](http://minikanren.org/) *
[https://cuelang.org/](https://cuelang.org/) *
[https://github.com/ekmett/guanxi](https://github.com/ekmett/guanxi)

Is there an algebraic logic strongly associated with what we conventionally
think of as types (see
[https://cuelang.org/docs/concepts/logic/](https://cuelang.org/docs/concepts/logic/))
which we can effectively and efficiently compute unions and Boolean
satisfiability?

~~~
dboreham
The thing that sunk the Transputer was that you couldn't (for the time it had
a hardware performance advantage over competitors) program it in C.

~~~
ncmncm
A friend of mine made a C compiler for Transputer.

He also made a loader that could copy a program to a whole network of
transputer chips in seconds, instead of hours like theirs.

They hated his C compiler, and hated him for making it, and did their best to
keep anybody from knowing about it. That was easier to do, before www.

~~~
dboreham
I'm not sure who is "They" here. Well...ok I have a bit of an idea of one or
two people ;)

But for 90% of the transputer group at the time it was very obvious that we
needed alien language support. We had to spin up a compiler group, which took
time. I seem to remember we also OEM'ed some compilers from outside vendors
before the internal ones were ready (memory hazy and I didn't work directly on
software there). I had direct contact with many customers, specifically
discussing C language support and I don't at all remember anything like what
you describe where 3rd party products were deliberately not mentioned.

------
davidw
> While Inmos and the transputer did not achieve this expectation, the
> transputer architecture was highly influential in provoking new ideas in
> computer architecture, several of which have re-emerged in different forms
> in modern systems.

I have a vague sense that there's a rich vein of potential projects and maybe
businesses in "before their time" ideas in the world of computing.

~~~
creddit
If you want inspiration the Computer Chronicles was a show on PBS documenting
in real time the process and rise of computers. I believe all episodes are on
YouTube here:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/ComputerChroniclesYT](https://www.youtube.com/user/ComputerChroniclesYT)

~~~
K0SM0S
This is incredible. I think I've just found my new late-night / fall-asleep
'fictional' TV show — because it really feels that way, in our weird cognitive
perception of the past.

Thanks a lot for the pointer. This may spark funny and uncanny world-
domination ideas! ( :

A serious hint/note for the "futurologists" / innovation-driven folks out
there — my people: look for what was true back then but is no longer,
especially in the form of limitations or roadblocks or axiom (hard limit) to a
design. Remove that piece and see what you get...

~~~
sifar
Couldn't agree more. A lot of things were invented in the 60's-80's which
didn't work out due to lack of applications, technological limitations of
those times etc.

------
EdNutting
On the 40th anniversary of Inmos, creators of Transputer, we filmed this set
of talks discussing the legacy and impact of Inmos in Bristol, UK. You'll find
some fun insight into Inmos and the transputer in some of the longer talks.

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKbvCgwMcH7A_taW2Td3R...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKbvCgwMcH7A_taW2Td3RrH10dTfHw7Br&feature=share)

------
K0SM0S
Question to people who know anything about circuit, processor design: are we
confident that current designs and paradigms are almost-as-good-as-it-gets for
our classes of materials, or is it just the result of 'good enough design +
scale economics = winner CPU arch' (resp. all types of processors) but there
could be many great "unknown unknowns" out there?

~~~
layoutIfNeeded
Absolutely not.

“Worse is better” applies on all levels: microarchitectures, ISAs, operating
systems, applications, languages, computing paradigms, etc. Once Moore’s law
is _truly_ over, we will be forced to make some real progress in areas other
than shrinking silicon features.

~~~
EdNutting
There's a nice quote on this topic from David May, ISA designer of the
Transputer, at the end of this article (available free if you sign up -
irritating pay wall): [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2019/12/06/end-
moores...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2019/12/06/end-moores-law-
will-usher-new-era-computing/)

~~~
layoutIfNeeded
No signup needed, just change your user agent to "Googlebot" :)

>“Moore’s ‘law’ came to an end over 20 years ago,” says David May, professor
of Computer Science at Bristol University and lead architect of the
influential "transputer" chip. “Only the massive growth of the PC market then
the smartphone market made it possible to invest enough to sustain it.

>“There’s now an opportunity for new approaches both to software and to
processor architecture. And there are plenty of ideas – some of them have been
waiting for 25 years. This presents a great opportunity for innovators – and
for investors.”

~~~
lproven
Thanks. That enabled me to find non-paywalled versions:

[http://www.impactlab.net/2019/12/09/how-the-end-of-moores-
la...](http://www.impactlab.net/2019/12/09/how-the-end-of-moores-law-will-
usher-in-a-new-era-in-computing/)

or

[https://moosegazette.net/how-the-end-of-moores-law-will-
ushe...](https://moosegazette.net/how-the-end-of-moores-law-will-usher-in-a-
new-era-in-computing/146992/)

------
duelingjello
Related: four-phase logic[0] and its red-haired, CMOS step-child, domino
logic[1].

0\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-
phase_logic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-phase_logic)

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_logic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_logic)

------
ourlordcaffeine
David May was my computer architecture professor.

~~~
EdNutting
David May is my PhD supervisor and cofounder of our new microprocessor company
- BeyondRISC. David's 3rd startup ;)

------
madsohm
If you're interested in more academic Transputers take a look at the CPA
(Communicating Process Architectures) conferences [0]. Just last year it
featured two papers on Transputers.

[0]
[http://wotug.cs.unlv.edu/conference.php?id=46](http://wotug.cs.unlv.edu/conference.php?id=46)

------
samsquire
The concurrent programming language occam that ran on the transputer can still
be ran today with occam pi.

[https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/projects/ofa/kroc/](https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/projects/ofa/kroc/)

~~~
sitkack
I look forward to running KRoC on Wasm, the
[http://www.transterpreter.org/](http://www.transterpreter.org/) is an
inspiration.

------
michaelhoffman
I remember seeing these advertised ubiquitously in computer magazines in the
late 1980s. Was always a bit curious about them. This Wikipedia link 30 years
later is the closest I ever came to interacting with one myself.

------
etaioinshrdlu
It sounds a liiitle bit like GreenArrays?
[http://www.greenarraychips.com/](http://www.greenarraychips.com/)

Except with multiple chips, not many cores like GreenArrays.

Similar ideas seem to pop up often and not really catch on too much.

~~~
sansnomme
Green Arrays suffer from the issue of low compute power. They target the
extreme low power market using a proprietary Forth dialect. It is difficult to
benchmark how it performs against existing general purpose ARM/x86-64/RISC-V
or even NVIDIA chips other than their claims of efficiency gains due to a
parallel architecture. Most of their existing press (especially on HN) is
because their founder is the inventor of Forth and that everything is
allegedly built on a single bootstrapped end-to-end Forth system with its own
EDA toolkit. Would be interesting if somebody can do a rigorous test against
e.g. Parallela chips.

------
blakespot
I so wanted an Atari ABAQ back in the late '80s.

------
godelmachine
Are all current computers essentially transputer?

