What's in a node?- RE: talking about where processor ormemorygoes and why.

[Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO]

 So do you think we may end up with a type of base station or thin
client that gives you a monitor, KB, mouse and the basics, but you have
a processor and memory in a pendrive-like case that you carry around?  

I can see this leading to some high-bandwidth connector like 1394
(firewire) for portable drive and processor and a commodity or standard
docking box.  It would allow for easy upgrades and not so much mass of
hardware being thrown away.  Your dock/thin client/base station device
could be like the Mac Mini or that AMD PIC computer in size with at most
a single internal optical drive, USB for KB and mouse, basic 3-D video
and then whatever high-speed ports (2-3) for plugging your CPU/memory
module and pendrive and heck, even an add-on video module.

If something like this comes out, then I can only hope there is a single
open design for the ports and dock basics so there is not the trouble
like the Firewire standard had with the extra fee per port.

Brian

-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Thayer
Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2007 10:10 AM

The technology you are thinking about may be on the drawing board
already.  Check out the next generation of Intel Chips.

http://news.com.com/Processor%2C+memory+may+marry+in+future+computers/21
00-1006_3-6120547.html?tag=nefd.top

I like the idea of an aggregate memory bandwidth of 1 terabyte/sec.
Pretty fast.

With this type of chip technology on the horizon, the computer on a
memory stick is the next logical step to follow it.

Phil

> -----Original Message-----
> From: kclug-bounces at kclug.org 
> [mailto:kclug-bounces at kclug.org] On Behalf Of Charles Steinkuehler
> Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2007 6:15 PM
> To: Oren Beck
> Cc: KCLUG
> Subject: Re: What's in a node?- RE: talking about where 
> processor or memorygoes and why.
> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Oren Beck wrote:
> > Well- why not have some ubergeeken amongst us whack together
> > some prototypes?
> 
> I'll bring the mask layouts, if you bring the fab equipment capable of
> running a fairly recent DRAM process.
> 
> Oh...and I'll probably use just about *ANYTHING* other than the 808x
> family, which I've always viewed as an abomination (the 
> better mousetrap
> doesn't always win).  The 6502, 6809, and several other lesser well
> known parts (harvard architecture DSP like cores, stack-based machines
> like the Harris RTX series and Atmel MARC4, or even PIC's for god's
> sake) are IMHO all better suited for such a machine.  :)
> 
> If you're not really serious about pushing the state of the 
> art, you can
> roll an array of CPU flavor(s) of your choice and a respectable amount
> of memory in modern FPGAs.  You can squeeze in a pretty 
> decent number of
> processors (depending on the core, of course...you get more 
> 6502's than
> 32-bit MIPS cores!), where this really suffers vs. a custom 
> solution is
> the memory.  The biggest FPGA's are currently toping out 
> around 1 MByte
> of internal block memory.
> 
> ...but then who's ever going to need more than 640KB, anyway?!?  :)
> 
> - --
> Charles Steinkuehler
> charles at steinkuehler.net