Inmos Limited was a British semiconductor company, founded by Iann Barron, based in Bristol and incorporated in November 1978.
Inmos's first products were static RAM devices, followed by dynamic RAMs and EEPROMs. Despite early production difficulties, Inmos eventually captured around 60% of the world SRAM market. However, Barron's long-term aim was to produce an innovative microprocessor architecture intended for parallel processing, the transput...
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Inmos Limited was a British semiconductor company, founded by Iann Barron, based in Bristol and incorporated in November 1978.
Inmos's first products were static RAM devices, followed by dynamic RAMs and EEPROMs. Despite early production difficulties, Inmos eventually captured around 60% of the world SRAM market. However, Barron's long-term aim was to produce an innovative microprocessor architecture intended for parallel processing, the transputer. David May and Robert Milne were recruited to design this processor, which eventually went into production in 1985 in the form of the T212 and T414 chips.
The transputer achieved some success as the basis for several parallel supercomputers from companies such as Meiko (formed by ex-Inmos employees in 1985), Floating Point Systems, Parsytec and Parsys. Being a relatively self-contained design, it was also used in some embedded systems. However, the unconventional nature of the transputer and its native occam programming language limited its...
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