9fans archive / 1999 / 10 / 4 /    prev next

From: steve.kilbane@ind... steve.kilbane@ind...
Subject: [9fans] Sun Ray: Deja vu
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 14:03:18 +0100


Sun's web site is currently full of "Sun Ray", its devastating new breakthrough
in systems design, moving all the computation back into a central powerful
server, and putting dumb, exchangable bitmap/keyboard/mouse units on the
desktop.

Right.

It has a number of interesting aspects, not least of which is the bandwidth
required. Instead of using something like bit(3) to do rendering on the
terminal, Sun Ray has X clients render into a virtual frame buffer on the
server, which is then zapped across to the terminal. This might be one of the
reasons why Sun Ray requires a dedicated switched network, rather than being on
the LAN.

I didn't spot any mention of the distinction between cpu and file servers (since
the server runs Solaris, I guess they're combined). As far as this goes, there
is a solid border between cpu server and terminal: the terminal does no
application processing.

Authentication can be via normal login, or smart cards, with a smart card reader
built into the terminal base unit.

An interesting side-effect of using a proxy X server on the server is that
sessions need not be terminated when you detach. They can continue, and be
recovered when you log in again, at another terminal. Another devastating
breakthrough, although there is no mention of "Teleporting", which Olivetti Labs
did in the early 90s using proxy X servers.

Supposedly, Citrix WinFrame stuff can be used to display Wintel apps on the same
screen, seemingly at the same time, and with cut'n'paste between the Solaris and
Wintel apps. Plus, Sun are pushing StarOffice as a means of getting access to
most of what Wintel's needed for, without requiring Wintel client licences.

Roughly speaking, this seems to take the hardware/administration aspects of the
Plan 9 model, and apply them in a blunt manner to the existing Solaris system,
with no other changes.

I vaguely recall Brazil having a different graphics model, more suited to
exploiting high-bandwidth networks. That wouldn't be another unrecognised
ancestor of this, would it?

steve