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Meiko Scientific
Meiko Scientific Ltd. was a British supercomputer company based in Bristol, founded by members of the design team working on the Inmos transputer microprocessor.
In 1985, when Inmos management suggested the release of the transputer be delayed, Miles Chesney, David Alden, Eric Barton, Roy Bottomley, James Cownie, and Gerry Talbot resigned and formed Meiko (Japanese for "well-engineered") to start work on massively parallel machines based on the processor. Nine weeks later in July 1985, they demonstrated a transputer system based on experimental 16-bit transputers at the SIGGRAPH in San Francisco.
In 1986, a system based on 32-bit T414 transputers was launched as the Meiko Computing Surface. By 1990, Meiko had sold more than 300 systems and grown to 125 employees. In 1993, Meiko launched the second-generation Meiko CS-2 system, but the company ran into financial difficulties in the mid-1990s. The technical team and technology was transferred to a joint venture company named Quadrics Supercomputers World Ltd. (QSW), formed by Alenia Spazio of Italy in mid-1996. At Quadrics, the CS-2 interconnect technology was developed into QsNet.
As of 2021[update], a vestigial Meiko website still exists.
The Meiko Computing Surface (sometimes retrospectively referred to as the CS-1) was a massively parallel supercomputer. The system was based on the Inmos transputer microprocessor, later also using SPARC and Intel i860 processors.
The Computing Surface architecture comprised multiple boards containing transputers connected together by their communications links via Meiko-designed link switch chips. A variety of different boards were produced with different transputer variants, random-access memory (RAM) capacities and peripherals.
The initial software environments provided for the Computing Surface was Occam Programming System (OPS), Meiko's version of Inmos's D700 Transputer Development System. This was soon superseded by a multi-user version, MultiOPS. Later, Meiko introduced Meiko Multiple Virtual Computing Surfaces (M²VCS), a multi-user resource management system let the processors of a Computing Surface be partitioned into several domains of different sizes. These domains were allocated by M²VCS to individual users, thus allowing several simultaneous users access to their own virtual Computing Surfaces. M²VCS was used in conjunction with either OPS or MeikOS, a Unix-like single-processor operating system.
In 1988, Meiko launched the In-Sun Computing Surface, which repackaged the Computing Surface into VMEbus boards (designated the MK200 series) suitable for installation in larger Sun-3 or Sun-4 systems. The Sun acted as front-end host system for managing the transputers, running development tools and providing mass storage. A version of M²VCS running as a SunOS daemon named Sun Virtual Computing Surfaces (SVCS) provided access between the transputer network and the Sun host.
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Meiko Scientific
Meiko Scientific Ltd. was a British supercomputer company based in Bristol, founded by members of the design team working on the Inmos transputer microprocessor.
In 1985, when Inmos management suggested the release of the transputer be delayed, Miles Chesney, David Alden, Eric Barton, Roy Bottomley, James Cownie, and Gerry Talbot resigned and formed Meiko (Japanese for "well-engineered") to start work on massively parallel machines based on the processor. Nine weeks later in July 1985, they demonstrated a transputer system based on experimental 16-bit transputers at the SIGGRAPH in San Francisco.
In 1986, a system based on 32-bit T414 transputers was launched as the Meiko Computing Surface. By 1990, Meiko had sold more than 300 systems and grown to 125 employees. In 1993, Meiko launched the second-generation Meiko CS-2 system, but the company ran into financial difficulties in the mid-1990s. The technical team and technology was transferred to a joint venture company named Quadrics Supercomputers World Ltd. (QSW), formed by Alenia Spazio of Italy in mid-1996. At Quadrics, the CS-2 interconnect technology was developed into QsNet.
As of 2021[update], a vestigial Meiko website still exists.
The Meiko Computing Surface (sometimes retrospectively referred to as the CS-1) was a massively parallel supercomputer. The system was based on the Inmos transputer microprocessor, later also using SPARC and Intel i860 processors.
The Computing Surface architecture comprised multiple boards containing transputers connected together by their communications links via Meiko-designed link switch chips. A variety of different boards were produced with different transputer variants, random-access memory (RAM) capacities and peripherals.
The initial software environments provided for the Computing Surface was Occam Programming System (OPS), Meiko's version of Inmos's D700 Transputer Development System. This was soon superseded by a multi-user version, MultiOPS. Later, Meiko introduced Meiko Multiple Virtual Computing Surfaces (M²VCS), a multi-user resource management system let the processors of a Computing Surface be partitioned into several domains of different sizes. These domains were allocated by M²VCS to individual users, thus allowing several simultaneous users access to their own virtual Computing Surfaces. M²VCS was used in conjunction with either OPS or MeikOS, a Unix-like single-processor operating system.
In 1988, Meiko launched the In-Sun Computing Surface, which repackaged the Computing Surface into VMEbus boards (designated the MK200 series) suitable for installation in larger Sun-3 or Sun-4 systems. The Sun acted as front-end host system for managing the transputers, running development tools and providing mass storage. A version of M²VCS running as a SunOS daemon named Sun Virtual Computing Surfaces (SVCS) provided access between the transputer network and the Sun host.