Newsgroups: comp.sys.transputer
From: Ian Page <page@comlab.ox.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Transputer - alternate source?
Organization: Oxford University Computing Laboratory
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 12:47:09 +0000
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Message-ID: <34CF28CD.47DC@comlab.ox.ac.uk>

pete wrote:
> ....
> is there a vhdl definition I know there is an emulator written in C
> if we used an FPGA won't the new one's run faster then the transputers
> anyway!
> somebody has mention to me that the oxford group are using a transputer
> to program
> FPGA with a C compiler of sorts!
> could we not convert the emulator written in C to this C variant the
> oxford group are using?
> and have ourselves a new transputer?
> 
> Pete

                                                                      
Yes, I think it is perfectly possible to compile a transputer into one
of today's larger FPGAs. Pete refers to us using transputers to
program FPGAs and indeed that is how our first hardware platfom (HARP)
worked. Like most other people we no longer use transputers, but...

I implemented a 'transputerette' some years ago in our hardware
compilation framework and have used it in teaching ever since. I also
presented it at Wotug 94 as part of paper on the automatic design and
construction of microprocessors to run particular programs.  We also
had a more extensive, automatically parametrised, transputer-like
thing (as well as other processors) but they were in an SML framework
that we have now left behind us. The paper mentioned is "Automatic 
Design and Implementation of Microprocessors":     
  
ftp://ftp.comlab.ox.ac.uk/pub/Documents/techpapers/Ian.Page/wotug94.ps.gz

The 'transputerette' is basically the machine presented in the paper
by Catherine Keane and David May "Compiling occam into silicon".  I
seem to remember David saying that the machine was "quite like the
abstract machine inside the occam portakit" but I never checked that
out. I've  put up the Handel-C source code for it:
  http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/oucl/users/ian.page/tmp/tputer.c

You can get a free evaluation copy of the Handel-C compiler,
simulator, and documentation which will run this processor example
(and lots more) from Embedded Solutions Ltd:
    http://www.embedded-solutions.ltd.uk/

The home page of my Hardware Compilation Research Group is:
    http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/oucl/hwcomp.html

On a related theme, ESL are involved in a (newly) funded EU project 
to implement virtual channels in FPGAs to support a large project 
which has hitherto been transputer-based.

Hope this helps,
Ian

***********************************************************
Ian Page, Reader in Computing Science,  
Oxford University Computing Lab, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QD
Tel: (+44/0) 1865 273853 direct, 273840 sec, 273839 fax.
      www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/oucl/people/ian.page.html