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I'm curious.. let me know good or bad (or wrong) what you guys think of this. Quick background. My understanding of how a mobile phone works: There is a primar

I'm curious.. let me know good or bad (or wrong) what you guys think of this. Quick background. My understanding of how a mobile phone works: There is a primary CPU, running Android, which does the majority of the work on the phone. Meanwhile, there is a second CPU attached to the radio running an RTOS. This RTOS interprets the signals from the antenna and makes nice packets for Android. The RTOS and secondary processing unit can then be optimized for just that one task, and Android can be optimized for reading, writing and processing data packets. Similarly, what if we made more parts of our infrastructure "smarter"? Take for example the monitor. Currently, it has a frame buffer, we fill it through a DVI cord and the lights change. Is there some abstraction at which we could make a monitor work "smarter". Can we put a GPU in the monitor? Then just move memory and call OpenGL commands. Is that a better abstraction for monitors? Can we also put a CPU on the monitor and embed an RTOS/rendering engine? Would that make a better abstraction? Could we then optimize the "smarter" monitor / integration with the game logic, better than we could have if the monitor just has a frame buffer? I don't have much domain knowledge and so I don't know what the correct abstraction for a "smarter" monitor should be. However, I do think its a good question to be asking (and not just about monitors). I'm curious if you guys can think of such an abstraction. What would that be?

pandaman 12y ago
GPUs are already pretty smart and are controlled by their own processor(s). Moving them into monitor is not going to make them smarter. On the other hand, communication with a GPU hooked up with a flexible cable is going to be more complicated than with a GPU sitting on a wide internal bus or, as it becomes more common, on the same chip with the CPU.
pjc50 12y ago
Then you'd have to upgrade your monitor every few years as the graphics card became obsolete. Also note that "integrate monitor with game logic" turns into "run the entire game in the monitor", at which point you've just pushed the computer up the cable into the monitor. Interestingly, smarter displays were actually available at one point as a "graphical terminal" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tektronix_4014 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tektronix_4014 ; people keep trying to reinstate this with the "thin client". The history of thin clients shows what the problem with "smart" infrastructure is. It moves the tradeoffs around rather than giving absolute benefits.

pandaman 12y ago

GPUs are already pretty smart and are controlled by their own processor(s). Moving them into monitor is not going to make them smarter. On the other hand, communication with a GPU hooked up with a flexible cable is going to be more complicated than with a GPU sitting on a wide internal bus or, as it becomes more common, on the same chip with the CPU.

pjc50 12y ago

Then you'd have to upgrade your monitor every few years as the graphics card became obsolete. Also note that "integrate monitor with game logic" turns into "run the entire game in the monitor", at which point you've just pushed the computer up the cable into the monitor. Interestingly, smarter displays were actually available at one point as a "graphical terminal" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tektronix_4014 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tektronix_4014 ; people keep trying to reinstate this with the "thin client". The history of thin clients shows what the problem with "smart" infrastructure is. It moves the tradeoffs around rather than giving absolute benefits.