Newsgroups: comp.sys.transputer
From: paul@walker.demon.co.uk (Paul Walker)
Subject: Re: Re:Re: LOOKING FOR DISTRIBUTORS...
Organization: Paul Walker Consultancy
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 1994 06:42:47 +0000
Message-ID: <780648167snz@walker.demon.co.uk>

In article <ABUBfXk4C3@transcom.mipt.su>
           kitten@transcom.mipt.su "Katalov Vladimir Yurievich" writes:

>>>In article AAFBNVk4C3@transcom.mipt.su,  kitten@transcom.mipt.su (Katalov
> Vladimir Yurievich) writes:
>>>
>>> Are you kidding? 3MB/32sec ~ 90kByte/sec! Performance????
>>>
>
>Tests was provided on following equipment:
>CPU 486DX2-66, AMI BIOS, Conner CP3544 (IDE, 12ms) HDD
>TRANSTECH TMB08 board (B008 compatible) with TTM3 TRAM (T800-20+1MB 0WS DRAM)
>

If you want more performance, you can have it, provided you move 
away from B008 compatibility. Transtech's TMB16 gives higher performance
by using the T2 to read from the (16-bit) ISA bus while the 486 is writing
to the ISA bus.

The board designed by CORAL for Sundance is a bit more expensive, but
provides full Master-Mode DMA to ISA, so not only can you get several
Mbytes/s transfer speed, but the processor can do other things during the 
transfer. This board also offers 12 TRAM slots, and a faster link 
switch than the C004.

If I may be permitted a mini-plug of my own:

A problem with most existing transputer host interface boards is that they
are designed for a single process running on the host, with a single
channel in each direction. I am trying to design a board to provide
a virtual channel interface, to provide many channels as if the PC or
host computer was itself a transputer. Combined with a master mode DMA
interface to the bus (again like the Link Engine inside a transputer), I
hope this will give reasonable performance. 

An outline of this work, including an analysis of a number of existing 
transputer interface boards, is in the WTC proceedings, p223.


The apparently very slow performance of _any_ server is a result more of 
the hardware than the software, at least when you use the B008 or a clone
of the B008. I hope the above has shown that this situation need not 
continue forever.
__
Paul Walker        Consultancy in product specification and design
+44 1275 844864    paul@walker.demon.co.uk

