RE: Occam-Tau - the natural successor to Occam-Pi

["P.H.Welch" <P.H.Welch@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Beau,

> However for my sins these days I spend quite a bit of my time writing
> VHDL for the FPGA based instrumentation I design for my experiments.
> And I keep looking at the concept of the multiple soft processors with
> fast interconnection links that can fit on these chips.
> 
> Is there any possibility of any of these Occam related parallel
> languages  being of use for sitting inside / generating code for these
> soft processors, on a reasonable time-scale ?

Take a look at:

  http://www.xmos.com/

This was founded by David May (chief architect for the transputer and occam)
and others a few years ago.  They are targetting (I think) customers with
needs exactly like those you describe.  Their XC language is a specialised
derivative from occam and their chips seem designed as FPGA replacements:
soft hardware re-programmable in an occam-like manner with very sleek
hardware support for concurrency (up to 32 processes anyway).

Cheers,

Peter.