When SGS-Thomson Microlectronics BV acquired Inmos International Plc in April, it made it clear that it intended to put enough muscle behind the Transputer to enable the part to compete head-to-head in world markets with the Intel Corp and Motorola Inc families and the emerging RISC microprocessor families, and on Friday it revealed parts of its strategy, coming out with a new entry-level 32-bit version of the part at a rock-bottom $20, which it reckons is $2 per MIPS. The company also discussed future developments, and revealed that the next Transputer, code named H1, will have a peak performance of 100 MIPS and 20Mflops, a large on-chip cache dispensing with the need for static RAM off chip, a 16Mb DRAM controller, 100Mbps link architecture, and input-output data rate of 80Mbytes per seconds. The H1 is in development at Inmos’ Newgate headquarters, and expects first silicon within 18 months. Inmos is now providing a range of software support packages that will enable new software to run on the Transputer. In addition to parallel C and Fortran compilers, development tools for for Sun Microsystems, VAX, IBM, and NEC computers, it plans optimising compilers for C, Fortran and Occam, a network debugg%r% a profiler, and TCP/IP Ethernet software. Integration with Unix will be achieved via TCP/IP, Sockets, and Remote Procedure Call support. A modular Iq subsystem is to be launched at the forthcoming Buscom, and Inmos will expand the Transputer Modules range of functions and interfaces. As well as bringing in the T400 at $20, available now, Inmos cut prices on the other family members 40% to 70%. The T400 is rated at 10 MIPS and 0.1 MFLOPS, has 4Gb address space, 2Kb on-chip static RAM two 20Mbps Transputer links. It software and pin compatible with the T800 floating point and T425 Transputers.
