Transtech Transputer, User Manual

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The TRAM Standard
TMB M 711 Transputer Motherboard User Manual
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Chapter 3
The TRAM Standard
This chapter forms a reference guide for TRAM equipment. It
describes the philosophy behind the TRAM standard before
describing Transputer Modules and Module motherboards. The
chapter discusses transputer networks and hierarchical control as
implemented on multiple motherboards.
The nature of reference dictates that the information be detailed.
Inspite of this, all users should aim to understand most of the material
in this chapter in order to gain the most out of using their TRAM
equipment.
3.1 Introduction
The transputer is a general purpose computational element
packaged as a single chip. It contains special dedicated
communications circuitry which enables a complete computing
engine to be constructed from more than one device. In this sense,
the transputer is very much a building block of large parallel
computers. In keeping with the building block philosophy of
transputers the Transputer Module (TRAM) standard was evolved so
that transputer based computing could be purchased in a way that
allowed users to customize their computers to their particular
application.
The standard allows parallel machines to be constructed with a mix
of computational performance and memory tailored for a given
application. The flexibility of the standard allows other functionality to
be inserted into the parallel machine at the optimum place, for
instance disk, graphics and other input/output capability.
To achieve this the standard first defines the Transputer Module. This
is a small circuit board which will generally contain a transputer,