> Splitting up the hardware breaks new ground. I'm not saying you're incorrect (I think the Surface Book indeed appears innovative and useful), I just wanted t

> Splitting up the hardware breaks new ground. I'm not saying you're incorrect (I think the Surface Book indeed appears innovative and useful), I just wanted to share the history of at least one product class -- Panda Project's Archistrat workstations and servers - that separates CPU, memory, and I/O into allegedly independent and upgradable subsystems connected by a passive backplane. BYTE wrote about it, and the Internet Archive luckily saved the interesting preview: https://web.archive.org/web/20080907024539/http://www.byte.com/art/9510/sec6/art7.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20080907024539/http://www.byte.c... As I searched for this article, I happened across Panda Project's patent for their backplane, published almost 17 years to the day: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5822551.html http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5822551.html It's probably just coincidence (I'm guessing MS wasn't waiting for this patent to expire before releasing the Surface Book), but it was a fun find. Edit: "Pics or it didn't happen", courtesy Infoworld via Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=qj4EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA59-IA3&ots=kvXMSZTwc4&pg=PA59-IA3#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=qj4EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA59-IA3&...