Inmos

Inmos International plc (trademark INMOS) and two operating subsidiaries, Inmos Limited (UK) and Inmos Corporation (US), was a British semiconductor company founded by Iann Barron, Richard Petritz, and Paul Schroeder in July 1978. Inmos Limited’s head office and design office were at Aztec West business park in Bristol, England. Inmos' 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 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. It was used in a few workstations, the most notable probably being the Atari Transputer Workstation. 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 appeal. During the late 1980s, the transputer (even in its later T800 form) also struggled to keep up with the ever-increasing performance of its competitors. Other devices produced by Inmos included the A100, A110 and A121 digital signal processors, G364 framebuffer, and a line of video RAMDACs, including the G170 and G171, which was adopted by IBM for the original VGA graphics adapter used in the IBM PS/2. The company was founded by Iann Barron, a British computer consultant, Richard Petritz and Paul Schroeder, both American semiconductor industry veterans. Initial funding of £50 million was provided by the UK government via the National Enterprise Board. A US subsidiary, Inmos Corporation, was also established in Colorado.