A Dynamically Switched Transputer BasedComputation System

An image generation system is being developed at the University of Bradford, called BRAD3D. Its aim is to generate in real time true 3 dimensional images on a colour display. The existing version is constructed from a number of Motorola 68020/68881 processors and a custom Video Display Processor (VDP). This is now being upgraded to a full Transputer system, including the VDP, which is covered in a separate offering to this conference. This paper will describe the Transputer based computation unit of the new BRAD3D, which performs all the necessary mathematics to allow the display of realistic 3D images. It is located between the Input Parser Unit, which is responsible for generating the online image database from a simple textual description, and the Video Display Processor. To enable BRAD3D to offer rapid interprocessor communication facilities and to allow for future expansion of the number of processors, the structure of the Computation Unit was designed to be dynamically re-configurable. That is, any link between two processors in the network can be changed during runtime, allowing real nearest neighbour communication.