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What is old is new again. IBM mainframes had a concept called a "channel controller". Everything connected to the mainframe basically was a computer itself that

What is old is new again. IBM mainframes had a concept called a "channel controller". Everything connected to the mainframe basically was a computer itself that offloaded the main system. Every DASD (disk), communication link was its own system. Random - the Commodore 1541 drive (all of their drives really) had their own 65xx CPU and some RAM (2K IIRC for the 1541). There was copy/backup software where you could hook up 2 devices, load the program and then disconnect the drives from the computer. You could put the master in the first drive, blank disk in the second and every time you swapped the backup it would make a new copy.

ethbr0 4y ago
AFAIK, oldest popular art would be the 1964 CDC 6600 and it's peripheral processors, designed around the idea that memory speed >> cpu speed (at the time, true). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_6600 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_6600 An electrical engineer looks at a computer design and says "If only we had faster switching transistors!" A computer scientist looks at a computer design and says "If only my compiler could optimize code better!" A computer engineer looks at state of the art across the board and says "This architecture will allow us to maximize performance with currently available components." If networking or IO is being held back by the CPU (or vice versus)... there's performance to be gained by doing things differently.