From: ncs@cs.rit.edu (Nan C Schaller)
Newsgroups: news.announce.conferences
Subject: Occam and Transputer Engineering at RIT
Date: 8 Apr 92 17:34:53 GMT
Expires: Fri, 29 May 1992 07:00:00 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY


Rochester Institute of Technology has invited Andre' Bakkers
of the University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands to
present his course, "Occam and Transputer Engineering", at
RIT in May, 1992.  This course has attracted over 1000
attendees worldwide.  The course has been offered in the UK,
Holland, South Africa and Greece and has been requested for
Australia as well.

Detailed information concerning the course follows.  If I
can answer any further questions, please feel free to call
me or send me e-mail.

I look forward to meeting you in May!

			Nan Schaller
			Rochester Institute of Technology
			ncs@cs.rit.edu
			(716) 475-2139

___________________________________________________________


              OCCAM AND TRANSPUTER ENGINEERING


   An Intensive Short Course for Scientists and Engineers


                     May 27 - 29, 1992

             Rochester Institute of Technology
                    Rochester, New York

			  $475.00

____________________________________________________________

                     COURSE OBJECTIVES

To acquire technical knowledge, insight and practical experi-
ence of parallel system design using occam and transputer net-
works.

                         BACKGROUND

Inmos transputers form a family of VLSI components  for  the
elementary  construction  of  multi-processor computing sys-
tems. The T800 integrates a 10 MIPS 32-bit  general  purpose
processor  a 1.5 MFLOPS  (ANSI-IEEE  754 standard)  floating
point  processor,  four  bi-directional  20  Mbits/sec.  DMA
channels,  4 Kbytes  of  fast static internal RAM and a pro-
grammable 32-bit external memory interface on a single  chip.
Transputers  are  not  combined  using a common bus, as that
would cause a bottleneck due to  contention.  Rather,  tran-
sputer  networks  of  arbitrary size, shape and power may be
created by simple two-wire connections of the DMA channels.

Harnessing the potential processing power of transputer net-
works requires the development of a fluency in parallel sys-
tems design  equal  to  traditional  skills  for  sequential
logic.  Occam  is a small and simple, but powerful language,
which enables such fluency. The model  of  parallelism  pro-
vided by occam is a central, not an added-on, feature and is
directly supported  by  the  Inmos  transputer.  This  model
reflects   major   software  engineering  features  such  as
abstraction, structuring, and  information  hiding  and  has
important  benefits  for the life-cycle development costs of
large systems, including the establishment of  libraries  of
reusable software and hardware components.

Occam and transputer technologies  provide  well-engineered,
production-quality  and  commercially  available  tools  for
parallel processing applications. These tools may be used to
construct  a  wide  range  of  systems - anything from high-
performance fault- tolerant real-time  embedded  systems  to
general purpose supercomputers.

                         THE COURSE

Software engineering principles,  process  allocation  tech-
niques,  real-time  applications  and  various  embedded and
supercomputing issues  will be  covered.  This  course  will
emphasize  strengths,  weaknesses and likely future develop-
ments of occam and transputers.

                     WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

If you are thinking of using parallel computing to  engineer
high-performance,  high-security systems, this course is for
you. If you have picked up basic occam syntax and  semantics
and are wondering how best to exploit its power, come along.
If you have never seen any occam before, so much the better!
We  have  found  that  hardware engineers with only a modest
knowledge of software, as well as those with some experience
with  traditional  high-level languages, find the occam con-
cepts for parallelism particularly easy to master.  Consider
joining  the  more  than  1000  engineers  from academia and
industry worldwide who have taken  this  course  since  Sep-
tember 1986.

                    PRESENTATION METHODS

Time will be divided between  informal  lectures  (40%)  and
hands-on  experience through practical exercises and a mini-
project (60%). There will be a ratio of one tutor for  every
six  attendees.  Practical experience will be provided using
the Inmos Occam Toolset on the Transtech transputer  system.
The Transtech system provides a multi-user, multi-transputer
development environment. The RIT system will support  up  to
16 simultaneous users, 14 with dedicated access to a private
network of transputers including at least  four  T800s.  The
full system is comprised of 80 T800 transputers.

                      COURSE MATERIALS

Copies of overhead slides will be provided, along with a set
of  notes  and  articles  written  by the course developers.
Furthermore, solutions to exercises, demonstration software,
and related occam libraries will be available.

                     COURSE BACKGROUND

This course was initially developed by the Computing Labora-
tory  of  the  University  of Kent, Canterbury, UK, in close
cooperation with the Control Laboratory of the University of
Twente.  The Control Laboratory, whose transputer experience
dates back to 1985, has participated in a number of success-
ful industrial projects, has developed an Advanced Occam and
Transputer Engineering Course, and continues to play a major
role  in  the research of real-time embedded systems. Course
instructors  will be  Professor Nan Schaller  from  RIT  and
Professor Andre Bakkers from the University of Twente.

                       EC RECOGNITION

This course forms the foundation for a series of courses and
technical  workshops entitled 'Training for Transputer Tech-
nologies'. These are being developed under contract with the
European  Community  as part of the Communities Actions Pro-
gram for Education and Training for Technology (COMETT).

____________________________________________________________

                       COURSE PROGRAM


            FIRST DAY (Wednesday, May 27, 1992)

 9:00 AM                                         Lecture

Concepts of parallelism, software  engineering  issues,  the
philosophy  of  occam,  the  occam model of parallelism, the
transputer.

10:30 AM                                         Laboratory

Introduction to the Transtech multi-user environment and the
Inmos  Occam Toolset, editing, compiling and executing occam
programs.

12:00 PM                                         Lunch

 1:00 PM                                         Lecture

The five primitive processes of occam, the occam  rendezvous-
like, synchronized and unbuffered communication, simple  data
types, strong typing rules, examples.

 2:00 PM                                         Laboratory

Exercises.

 3:30 PM                                         Lecture

Sequential  and  parallel  process   constructors,   process
abstraction,  the occam discipline for parallelism, replica-
tors, arrays examples.

 5:00 PM                                         Social Hour

 6:00 PM                                         Dinner

 7:00 PM                                         Exercises

 9:30 PM                                         Closing

____________________________________________________________


            SECOND DAY (Thursday, May 28, 1992)

 9:00 AM                                         Lecture

Simple  networks  of  processes,  parallel  system  building
starting from low-level components, hierarchies of construc-
tion,  comparison  with  sequential  methods,  deadlock  and
livelock  -  new  issues  for  the parallel system designer,
examples.

10:30 AM                                         Laboratory

Exercises.

12:00 PM                                         Lunch

 1:00 PM                                         Lecture

Non-determinism - choosing between competing  events,  asyn-
chronous communication, buffered communication, multiplexing
and demultiplexing channels, examples.

 2:00 PM                                         Laboratory

Exercises.

 3:30 PM                                         Lecture

Designing parallel software components for  reusability  and
testability, reusable interactive test circuits, some larger
occam systems - digital logic emulation,  control  circuits,
compilers, programming support environments.

 5:00 PM                                         Social Hour

 6:00 PM                                         Dinner

 7:00 PM                                         Exercises

 9:30 PM                                         Closing

____________________________________________________________

              THIRD DAY (Friday, May 29, 1992)

 9:00 AM                                         Lecture

Channel protocols, generating block moves and DMA, abbrevia-
tions  and  parameter passing, anti-aliasing rules, security
issues, retyping, performance issues, examples.

10:30 AM                                         Laboratory

Select and begin mini-project  or continue exercises  (indi-
viduals will be able to work at their own pace).

12:00 PM                                         Lunch

 1:00 PM                                         Lecture

Ports  and  memory-mapped  peripherals,  real-time   issues,
priorities,   interrupt   handling,   guaranteeing   maximum
response times, detecting hardware failures on adjacent pro-
cessors or links, examples.

 2:00 PM                                         Laboratory

Project work/exercises.

 3:30 PM                                         Lecture

Transputer applications - embedded systems and  supercomput-
ers, case studies of embedded systems.

 5:00 PM                                         Certificates

 5:15 PM                                         Conclusion

Coffee/tea breaks will be arranged in parallel with  practi-
cal  sessions.  This course schedule may be subject to minor
alterations.

____________________________________________________________

                    REGISTRATION *

Please register me in the Occam and  Transputer  Engineering
Course  to be held on May 27 - 29, 1992 at the Computer Sci-
ence Department of the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Name:        _________________________
Address:     _________________________
City, State: _________________________
Zip code:    _________________________

Company/Billing address:

Company:     _________________________
Attn:        _________________________
Address:     _________________________
City, State: _________________________
Zip code:    _________________________

Telephone:   _________________________
Fax:         _________________________

Mail your application to:

Ms. Renee Fedeli
Rochester Institute of Technology
Computer Science Department
Ross Memorial Building
1 Lomb Memorial Drive
Rochester, NY  14623-0887
USA

e-mail: renee@cs.rit.edu
Tel:    (716)-475-6508
Fax:    (716) 475-7100


                       ACCOMMODATIONS

We offer you a choice of accommodations:

There is dorm space available  ($17.50 per night for  a  sin-
gle, $31.00 per night for a  double, children under 12 free),
or you may  choose to stay  at The Radisson  ((716) 475-1910)
also located on campus, for $73.00/night for a single, $78.00
for a  double.  We will  make the reservation for you, if you
specify the  nights and location for which you require accom-
modations.  Payment for the dormitory space  should accompany
your application.

Dates for which accomodations are required:  ________________

Accommodations for how many people?          ________________

Where?   (circle at most one)

dormitory               		      The Radisson

Total housing cost:
(if dormitory)          		    _________________

Course fee:             	                $ 475.00
                        		    _________________

Total Remittance: 			    _________________


        Check: _______     		   Charge: __________

        Master card:_______  		   Visa:   __________

Card Number:    	   __________________________________

Exp. Date:      	                   __________________

Signature:      ________________________

Please  return this  registration form by Wednesday, April 15,
1992.

* The course will be limited to the first 30 applicants.