An integration of network communication with workstation architecture

Abstract

A workstation may be thought of as a group of cooperatively connected subsystems. Point--to--point channels may be used to create a small--scale Gigabit LAN to which these subsystems are attached as nodes. The architectural focus of such a workstation shifts towards its internal LAN. An attractive attribute of this LAN is that its aggregate capacity scales linearly with the number of nodes attached to it.If the link--layer of the internal LAN is made equivalent to the link--layer of the external LAN, interior nodes become directly accessible externally. Except for latency the distinction between whether a node is inside a workstation versus outside it need not be significant. This property is particularly attractive for distributed communication--intensive applications.