Newsgroups: comp.sys.transputer,comp.realtime
From: rob@Cygnus.COM (Rob Savoye)
Subject: Re: communicating between processors in the same bus -- ideas??
Organization: Cygnus Support
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 22:04:43 GMT
Message-ID: <rob.761349883@darkstar.cygnus.com>

vpu@wolverine.utias.utoronto.ca (Vince Pugliese) writes:

>we currently have a multiple transputer (10) configuration housed in
>a VME chassis with a SparcEngine acting as bus master. we are considering
>adding a separate digital frame grabber board based around an Alacron FT-200
>which itself has two i860 processors. the tricky part about this integration
>is coming up with a scheme that will allow us to communicate the results
>for the frame grabber to the transputer network. several ideas have been
>kicked around from using the serial port on the frame grabber and "blasting" the
>data to an rs-232 serial tram, to using the VME for passing the data.

>what i would like to know from the transputer community is if anyone has had any
>any luck/experience doing what we are trying to do. it may not necessarily have
>to be with the exact type of hardware but any sort of analogous equipment would
>suffice. any and all ideas/suggestions/guesses appreciated

  I've done this before, but it was in a sun3/260 about 5-6 years ago. As it
was done with our own hardware, it was easy. On the VME side, we just used
the mmap() call (must be supported in your device driver) to map RAM from our
board so it could be seen under a Unix application. Then we wrote a simple
message passing library that worked on all the hardware (a bunch of
transputers, and early generation TAAC board, a sun3 (later an early sun4/260)

  Then the TAAC board (for graphics) would just send a message to the T800
boards. In reality, it would go to the sun3 via another mmap() section, then
our routing software would send it to it's destination. (the transputers). I
could generate some amazing fractals, quite quickly. :-)

  We used the serial port trick till we got our VME interface debugged. We
used RS485 (cause it's more robust) and converted it to a transputer link
via a black box our hardware folks built.

	- rob -
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