Transputer is a word meaning transistor computer. It is officially spelled with lower case. It was made by British semiconductor firm INMOS Ltd. It was the first general purpose microprocessor intended to be used in parallel multiprocessor computers. It was to be a range of chips of varying power and cost, that were assembled to form a full computer. The name indicated the role that individual transputers had: they would be used as basic building blocks, as transistors had been.