Linked by Jim Kirkley on Thu 12th Jun 2003 02:18 UTC
Back on June 9 2003, OSNews posted an article by Joshua Boyles entitled "The Edge Computing System". In that article Joshua lays out his vision, "of a new and very unique computing system". In this new article, an attempt will be made to further build on Jonathan's ideas through what can be termed, "Open Peripheral Hardware Connectivity".
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its all about these interface chips for the first generation. You need to have 2 things, a standard interface and a standard protocol. for instance.
Gigabit ethernet for the interface(more below)
A new, low latancy protocal for communication over the wire.
Gigabit ethernet could be changed to a new, smaller connector for convienience in small devices. Every device would have a Gigabit ethernet port on in and a "translator" chip. This chip does one thing, translated the devices native language into the standard protocal and sends it out over the wire. All vendors could build their own protocals and interfaces however they liked, as long as the connected to the translator to send over the wire.
consider than gigabit is not the best solution for this, a higher speed seriel link would be preferable like 10Gb line because a 1600x1200x24bit colour image would saturate the wire if it were uncompressed.
be sure to provide power over the wire as well, for small devices, keyboards, mice, etc. Make all hub devices switches. Allow various levels of compression to be used by the "translator" chips, each generation could include better compression and higher clock speeds with autosensing of compression and clock to keep backwards compatability.
also, allow every device to have a static but adjustable address with number ranges based on device type. i.e. 10xxx for keyboards, 11xxx, for mouses, etcetc. Each server device you be able to autoidentify and enable anything directly plugged into it, but also be able to "grab" controll of a device over the network by address. This way a device may be controlled from accross the facility and also displayed accross the facility. make controll and display devices operate together on a local switch basis, so if a keyboard has controll of a blade somewhere else in the building, the local monitor and mouse will also gain access, as well as the local CDrom, printer, scanner, etc if available. that adds a number to the address field for switches, but that is transparent to the user. another option would be to not give addresses to individual devices but only to switches and have an LCD interface to select address of the server machine and compression levels, passwords and access rights, etc etc. maybee even a flash card/smart card slot for security uses and also offline file storage and personal settings.