Inmos

Inmos International plc (Trademark INMOS) and two operating subsidiaries, Inmos Limited (UK) and Inmos Corporation (US), was a British semiconductor company co-founded by Iann Barron, Richard Petritz and Paul Schroeder in July 1978. Inmos Limited’s head office and design office was located at Aztec West in Bristol, England.

Products

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 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.