OpenTransputer: Reinventing a Parallel Machine from the Past
Amaya Garc iacute a Andr eacute s, Keller David, May David · IOS Press eBooks · 2018
The OpenTransputer is a new implementation of the Transputer first launched by Inmos in 1985. It supports the same instruction set, but uses a different microarchitecture that takes advantage of today's manufacturing technology; this results in a reduced cycle count for many of the instructions. Our new Transputer includes support for channels that connect to input-output ports, enabling direct connection to external devices such as sensors, actuators and standard communication interfaces. We have also generalised the channel communications with the support of virtual channels and the design of a message routing component based on a Beneš switch to enable the construction of networks with scalable throughput and low latency. We aim to make the OpenTransputer and switch components available as open-source designs.