Atari Transputer Workstation
Encyclopedia
The Atari Transputer Workstation (also known as ATW-800, or simply ATW) was a workstation
class computer released by Atari Corporation
in the late 1980s. Based on the INMOS transputer
, the machine was considerably more powerful than anything available on the market at the time. Nevertheless, sales were almost non-existent, and the product was canceled after only a few hundred had been produced.
, along with a few other employees, to start Perihelion Software
in England. There they started development of a new parallel-processing operating system
known as "HeliOS
". At about the same time a colleague started Perihelion (later Perihelion Hardware) to create a new transputer based workstation that would run HeliOS.
While at MetaComCo, much of the Perihelion Software team had worked with both Atari Corp. and Commodore International
, producing ST BASIC for the former, and AmigaDOS
for the latter. The principals still had contacts with both companies. Commodore had expressed some interest in their new system, and showed demos of it on an add-on card running inside an Amiga 2000
. It appears they later lost interest in it. It was at this point that Atari Corp. met with Perihelion and work started on what would eventually become the ATW.
The machine was first introduced at the November 1987 COMDEX
under the name Abaq. Two versions were shown at the time; one was a card that connected to the Mega ST bus expansion slot, the second version was a stand-alone tower system containing a miniaturized Mega ST inside. The external card version was dropped at some point during development. It was later learned that the "Abaq" name was in use in Europe, so the product name was changed to ATW800. Perihelion remained the exclusive distributor in England. A first run of prototypes was released in May 1988, followed by a production run in May 1989. In total only 350 machines were produced (depending on the source either 50 or 100 of the total were prototypes).
The team in charge of the ATW's video system, "Blossom", would later work on another Atari project, the Atari Jaguar
video game console.
All of these were connected using the transputer's 20 Mbit/s processor links. The motherboard also contained three slots for additional "farm cards" containing four transputers each, meaning that a fully expanded ATW contained 13 transputers. Each ran at 20 MHz (the -20 in the name) which supplied about 10 MIPS each. The bus was also available externally, allowing several ATWs to be connected into one large farm. The motherboard also included a separate slot for one of the INMOS crossbar switches to improve inter-chip networking performance.
HeliOS was Unix
-like, but not Unix. Of particular note was the lack of memory protection, due largely to the lack of an MMU
on the transputer. This is not quite the issue it might seem, as the transputer's stack
-based architecture makes an MMU less important. Meanwhile HeliOS was Unix-like enough that it ran standard Unix utilities, including the X Window System
as the machine's graphical user interface
(GUI). In addition HeliOS ran on all of the transputers in a farm at "the same time", which allowed all computing tasks to be fully distributed. Turning off an ATW would not affect the overall farm, the tasks would simply move to other processors on other systems.
Blossom supported several video modes:
While not much by today's standards, in the 1980s this was largely unheard of. Blossom also included a number of high-speed effects (128 megapixel fill rates) and blitter
functionality, including the ability to apply up to four masks on a bit-blit
operation in a fashion similar to a modern graphics processing unit
's ability to apply several textures to a 3D object.
One oddity of the ATW is that it appears that the Blossom was responsible for the DRAM refresh, although the transputer included such hardware internally.
Workstation
A workstation is a high-end microcomputer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems...
class computer released by Atari Corporation
Atari Corporation
Atari Corporation was a manufacturer of computers and video game consoles from 1984 to 1996. Atari Corp. was founded in July of 1984 when Warner Communications sold the home computing and game console divisions of Atari to Jack Tramiel. Its chief products were the Atari ST, Atari XE, Atari 7800,...
in the late 1980s. Based on the INMOS transputer
INMOS transputer
The transputer was a pioneering microprocessor architecture of the 1980s, featuring integrated memory and serial communication links, intended for parallel computing. It was designed and produced by Inmos, a British semiconductor company based in Bristol....
, the machine was considerably more powerful than anything available on the market at the time. Nevertheless, sales were almost non-existent, and the product was canceled after only a few hundred had been produced.
History
In 1986 Tim King left his job at MetaComCoMetaComCo
MetaComCo was a computer systems software company started in 1981 and based in Bristol, England by Peter Mackeonis and Derek Budge.MetaComCo's first product was an MBASIC compatible interpreter for IBM PC's, which was licensed by Peter Mackeonis to Digital Research in 1982, and issued as the...
, along with a few other employees, to start Perihelion Software
Perihelion Software
Perihelion Software was a United Kingdom company founded in 1986 by Dr. Tim King along with a number of colleagues who had all worked together at MetaComCo on AmigaOS and written compilers for both the Amiga and the Atari ST....
in England. There they started development of a new parallel-processing operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
known as "HeliOS
HeliOS
HeliOS was a Unix-like operating system for parallel computers developed and sold by Perihelion Software. It was most commonly used on various Transputer systems, but also supported other architectures. The system provided a micro-kernel that implemented a distributed name space and messaging...
". At about the same time a colleague started Perihelion (later Perihelion Hardware) to create a new transputer based workstation that would run HeliOS.
While at MetaComCo, much of the Perihelion Software team had worked with both Atari Corp. and Commodore International
Commodore International
Commodore is the commonly used name for Commodore Business Machines , the U.S.-based home computer manufacturer and electronics manufacturer headquartered in West Chester, Pennsylvania, which also housed Commodore's corporate parent company, Commodore International Limited...
, producing ST BASIC for the former, and AmigaDOS
AmigaDOS
AmigaDOS is the disk operating system of the AmigaOS, which includes file systems, file and directory manipulation, the command-line interface, and file redirection....
for the latter. The principals still had contacts with both companies. Commodore had expressed some interest in their new system, and showed demos of it on an add-on card running inside an Amiga 2000
Amiga 2000
The Amiga 2000, or A2000, is a personal computer released by Commodore in 1986. It is the successor to the Amiga 1000.-Features:Aimed at the high-end market, the original Europe-only model adds a Zorro II backplane, implemented in programmable logic, to the custom Amiga chipset used in the Amiga 1000...
. It appears they later lost interest in it. It was at this point that Atari Corp. met with Perihelion and work started on what would eventually become the ATW.
The machine was first introduced at the November 1987 COMDEX
COMDEX
COMDEX was a computer expo held in Las Vegas, Nevada, each November from 1979 to 2003. It was one of the largest computer trade shows in the world, usually second only to the German CeBIT, and by many accounts one of the largest trade shows in any industry sector...
under the name Abaq. Two versions were shown at the time; one was a card that connected to the Mega ST bus expansion slot, the second version was a stand-alone tower system containing a miniaturized Mega ST inside. The external card version was dropped at some point during development. It was later learned that the "Abaq" name was in use in Europe, so the product name was changed to ATW800. Perihelion remained the exclusive distributor in England. A first run of prototypes was released in May 1988, followed by a production run in May 1989. In total only 350 machines were produced (depending on the source either 50 or 100 of the total were prototypes).
The team in charge of the ATW's video system, "Blossom", would later work on another Atari project, the Atari Jaguar
Atari Jaguar
The Atari Jaguar is a video game console that was released by Atari Corporation in 1993. It was the last to be marketed under the Atari brand until the release of the Atari Flashback in 2004. It was designed to surpass the Mega Drive/Genesis, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and the Panasonic...
video game console.
Description
The ATW system consisted of three main parts:- the main motherboard containing a T800-20 transputer and 4MB of RAM (expandable to 16MB)
- a complete miniaturized Mega STAtari STThe Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was released by Atari Corporation in 1985 and commercially available from that summer into the early 1990s. The "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", which referred to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals...
acting as an I/OInput/outputIn computing, input/output, or I/O, refers to the communication between an information processing system , and the outside world, possibly a human, or another information processing system. Inputs are the signals or data received by the system, and outputs are the signals or data sent from it...
processor with 512kB of RAM - the Blossom video system with 1MB of dual-ported RAMDual-ported RAMDual-ported RAM is a type of Random Access Memory that allows multiple reads or writes to occur at the same time, or nearly the same time, unlike single-ported RAM which only allows one access at a time....
All of these were connected using the transputer's 20 Mbit/s processor links. The motherboard also contained three slots for additional "farm cards" containing four transputers each, meaning that a fully expanded ATW contained 13 transputers. Each ran at 20 MHz (the -20 in the name) which supplied about 10 MIPS each. The bus was also available externally, allowing several ATWs to be connected into one large farm. The motherboard also included a separate slot for one of the INMOS crossbar switches to improve inter-chip networking performance.
HeliOS was Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
-like, but not Unix. Of particular note was the lack of memory protection, due largely to the lack of an MMU
Memory management unit
A memory management unit , sometimes called paged memory management unit , is a computer hardware component responsible for handling accesses to memory requested by the CPU...
on the transputer. This is not quite the issue it might seem, as the transputer's stack
Stack (data structure)
In computer science, a stack is a last in, first out abstract data type and linear data structure. A stack can have any abstract data type as an element, but is characterized by only three fundamental operations: push, pop and stack top. The push operation adds a new item to the top of the stack,...
-based architecture makes an MMU less important. Meanwhile HeliOS was Unix-like enough that it ran standard Unix utilities, including the X Window System
X Window System
The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...
as the machine's graphical user interface
Graphical user interface
In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
(GUI). In addition HeliOS ran on all of the transputers in a farm at "the same time", which allowed all computing tasks to be fully distributed. Turning off an ATW would not affect the overall farm, the tasks would simply move to other processors on other systems.
Blossom supported several video modes:
- mode 0: 1280 by 960 pixels, 16 grayscales out of a palette of 4096
- mode 1: 1024 by 768 pixels, 256 colours out of a palette of 16.7 million
- mode 2: 640 by 480 pixels (2 virtual screens), 256 colours out of a palette of 16.7 million
- mode 3: 512 by 480 pixels, 16.7 million colours
- mode 4: 1280 by 960 pixels, 16 colours out of a palette of 4096
While not much by today's standards, in the 1980s this was largely unheard of. Blossom also included a number of high-speed effects (128 megapixel fill rates) and blitter
Blitter
In a computer system, a blitter is a circuit, sometimes as a coprocessor or a logic block on a microprocessor, that is dedicated to the rapid movement and modification of data within that computer's memory...
functionality, including the ability to apply up to four masks on a bit-blit
Bit blit
Bit BLIT is a computer graphics operation in which several bitmaps are combined into one using a raster operator....
operation in a fashion similar to a modern graphics processing unit
Graphics processing unit
A graphics processing unit or GPU is a specialized circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory in such a way so as to accelerate the building of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display...
's ability to apply several textures to a 3D object.
One oddity of the ATW is that it appears that the Blossom was responsible for the DRAM refresh, although the transputer included such hardware internally.
External links
- Ram's Totally Unofficial ATW800 Pages
- Atari Transputer at Atarimuseum.com
- Atari transputer Workstation 800 Data Sheet
- Transputer emulator - It emulates a single T414 transputer (i.e. no FPU, no blitting instructions) and supplies the file and terminal I/O services that were usually supplied by the host computer system.