Transputers for Industrial Applications

The transputer is currently being used in more than 1,000 designs worldwide, which indicates its importance for industrial applications. In this paper we describe the philosophy behind the transputer and its language, occam; the most important features of transputers; and the impact they can have on parallel system design and development. A description is given of the available development systems and programming languages, as well as an overview of some of the more important application areas. We conclude with a number of remarks about the future and the usability of the transputer. For people who are building faster computer systems, the transputer is a dream come true: it is pleasant to design with, it is easy to program, and it has a very high performance.

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