Transputer arrays as FORTRAN farms for particle physics

The INMOS transputer, the T414, and the newly-announced floating-point version, the T800, capable of speeds in excess of one Mflop, are powerful and versatile microprocessors which are natural building blocks for multiprocessor arrays. This paper details our experience using transputer arrays in a FORTRAN “farm” mode, in which each transputer runs the same program on different data, and passes the results to a host microcomputer. The transputer hardware used consists of a Meiko Computing Surface machine. Benchmark timings for the T414 are given for the LUND Monte Carlo generator FORTRAN program used to model QCD jet events. Preliminary results obtained using engineering samples of the T800 are also given.