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On Fri, 26 Oct 2012, tom wrote:
This was a 1024 device machine ISTR the number was written on the side or thru conversations with potential users - it was for the black ops department where I worked so it might not have gone thru normal channels.
Maybe, but I couldn't possibly say ...
It was about 7 or 8' high, any smaller and it would have gone in the cortina! I never found out what it was for but it was about the time they stopped us making an RSA voice encryption/decryption chip for phones so perhaps they couldn’t get it working properly.
I know that a big thing they (BT) were looking into was data compression - doing things like real-time audio compression was fiendishly hard at the time - especially when you wanted to squeeze 16 voice channels down a single 128Kb/sec ISDN line...
I heard that inmos got so many military sales they sat on their laurels. It really was the era of the 'world only needing 5 computers' and people were locked in their own little paradigms. I'm still amazed by 'new' technology that comes out and we were doing that 22+ years ago at BTRL. I even toyed with the idea of a 16 bit 2.4Ghz cpu (about $10) for a while but we got privatised and anyone with any real technical knowledge got thrown out. 'We are a telecoms company and we don’t do research' I was told on presenting a design for 2.4GB fibre optic t-switch/repeater for $5. Last time I heard they we're paying £60k to buy similar of others...
Price per port is the key now - however I know that some old folks who worked for Meiko are now doing a 40Gb/sec switch product.. (see www.gnodal.com). There's a lot of business in and around Bristol that have sprung up involving ex inmos/meiko/division/etc. people. I did enjoy being a part of it at the time
... However, getting back to the subject of the email - the Raspberry Pi - nearly everyone in these companies that I know today are getting a little grey around what little hair they have left... Myself included! Even locally, we have a company in Newton Abbot designing the latest 60GHz+ wireless networking kit and the average engineer age is pushing 50... And this is bleeding edge - the sort of stuff graduates would (should!) have been drooling over 15 years ago - yet they were struggling to get staff!
And this is why Eben created the Pi - or the concept of the Pi - to encourage a new generation of young enginers into computing, E&EE, etc. because the reality is that we have a huge generation gap and a real shorage of new skilled post-grads right now.
Gordon
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