Forgive me if my understanding of certain systems is imperfect or a brutal simplification.
With the Macintosh and Macintosh Plus era, the LaserWriter had a CPU and the Mac basically said print this, and the LaserWriter took care of the printing and the Macintosh went on its merry way.
What if you took this idea a step, or ten further?
Start with the expansion board or motherboard, whatever you want to call it. Plug in the main CPU module. Then plug in:
- co-processor modules as needed.
- memory modules.
- graphics modules.
- disk storage modules.
You could then mix and match modules. Need more of something, add a module. Each module would be smart, just tell it what you want. Display this, store that.
I can come up with idea like this, because I don’t know any better. I have no engineering or electrical background. I do get that the main board design would be rough to get the flexibility and data rates between modules to work. The operating system would be insane to write.
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41/45
we have this, apple called it the mac II =)
really in todays world your basic graphics, memory controller, coprocessors and other tidbits are all on the cpu, from there you plug in what you want or get a better one