Advanced Operating Systems   COMP9242 2002/S2

UNSW

Printer-Friendly Version Administration                - Notices - Course Intro - Consultations # On-line Survey (closed) - Survey Results   Work - Lectures - Milestone 0 - Project Admin - Project Spec - Project FAQ - Exam   Documentation - ASysT Lab - L4 source browser - Sulima ISA Simulator - R4x00 ISA Summary  - MIPS R4700 Reference - MIPS R4000 User Manual  - Network Driver - GT64111   Related Info - Aurema OS Prize - OS Hall of Fame   History - 2000 - 1999 - 1998   Staff - Gernot Heiser (LiC)

The Return of the Dumb Terminal: SLIM[SLN99] Problem: high cost-of-ownership of PCs PCs are expensive to maintain/administrate as individual machines. Would be cool to have the power of a big iron occasionally. There's still (or again?) some attraction in big central servers. Idea: Stateless thin-client architecture Stateless (other than frame buffer) cheap terminals (graphic displays), server sends 2D bitmaps, connected via 100Mbps ethernet. Supported by very simple, low-level display protocol (5 commands): SET: set pixes in rectangle to literal value BITMAP: fill rectangle with foreground, background colour FILL: set all pixels to fixed value COPY: copy rectangle CSCS: colour-space conversion Benchmarked GUI apps: photoshop, netscape, framemaker, MPEG, quake