ClearCube CPU BladeAnother potential application is to work in conjunction with a new product from ClearCube. Here's an e-mail I just sent to Icron's business development address, and below it is the article from eWEEK:
While perusing the August 21 issue of eWEEK I came across an article which may be of interest to Icron. Seems that a company called ClearCube has introduced a product based on a chassis-mountable card called a CPU Blade. The idea behind the product is to move the "system unit" of a desktop system to a centralized area, and to rackmount it. Rather the regurgitate what the article explains, here's where you can find it:
https://www.zdnet.com/eweek/stories/general/0,11011,2616271,00.html
and the company's URL is
www.clearcube.com
The relevance to Icron is that each CPU card is equipped with two USB ports. One of the main deficiencies of the concept is that users do not have access to removable storage at their desktop. It occurs to me that if the USB ports could be extended (I wonder how ;) ), USB-connected removable storage devices could be made available to users requiring them. Similarly, users of the system could take advantage of USB scanners, printers, monitors, and other such devices, while still maintaining the concept of a centrally-managed cluster of CPUs.
The article, from the August 21 issue, can be found at
https://www.zdnet.com/eweek/stories/general/0,11011,2616271,00.html
and reads:
A Clear-Cut PC Solution
By Jason Brooks, eWEEK Labs
August 21, 2000 12:00 AM ET
Clearcube Technology Inc. has seized an innovative middle ground in the managed PC/thin-client field with its C3 architecture, a compact, rack-mounted computing solution that delivers video, sound, mouse and keyboard signals up to 1,000 feet over Ethernet cable.
The lack of input options and certain network restrictions make this a less-than-ideal solution for many companies, but sites such as call centers will benefit from the small size and centralized manageability -- without the accompanying server overhead and performance limitations of the thin-client computing model -- offered by the ClearCube solution.
At the core of ClearCube's C3 architecture is the CPU Blade, a complete PC based on Intel Corp.'s 810E chip set and designed for rack mounting. The architecture's second and third "C's" are the Cage, which houses the CPU Blades, and the C/Port, which sits at user workstations.
In eWeek Labs' Business Winstone benchmark tests, the CPU Blade performed comparably to the PowerMate Slimline ES from NEC Corp. and the Netvista S40 from IBM, both of which feature the 667MHz Pentium III CPU.
The CPU Blades that eWeek Labs evaluated shipped with 700MHz Pentium III processors, 128MB of RAM and 10GB hard drives and were priced at $1,395. This price is considerably higher than comparably outfitted legacy lite machines from Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM and Compaq Computer Corp. The ClearCube units, which began shipping in June, are priced in line with more traditional managed systems, such as Dell Computer Corp.'s OptiPlex and NEC's PowerMate ES.
Each CPU Blade is 5.25 inches high, and eight fit alongside one another in a single Cage. With 12 Cages, a company can house 96 PCs in a single 19-inch rack. The recommended distance from the Blades to C/Ports is 650 feet, but ClearCube officials said the signals can cross 1,000 feet of cable without breaking up.
Category 5 a must
Sites deploying CPU blades might need to modify their networks because the architecture requires Category 5 cable between the user workstations and the Blade racks.
Users work on the C/Port, a metal box roughly the size of a VHS cassette and outfitted with ports for a PS/2 mouse, a keyboard, a standard monitor, speakers and a microphone.
The C/Port unit that sits at the user workstation features controls for fine-tuning the video signals from the Blade. In tests, few of the units required this sort of adjustment, but for those that did, we found the controls easy to use.
Operating a ClearCube PC is no different from using any other system, with one important exception -- the C/Port has no slots for removable media devices. The CPU Blade itself is equipped with two USB (Universal Serial Bus) ports. The centralized system location and lack of removable media grant IT administrators a greater amount of control over hardware assets and software loaded onto user machines.
Because the C/Ports cannot use removable media, administrators must install software and operating system images on the machines via the network or using USB floppy or CD-ROM drives.
The Clear Cube Blades have standard components, and IT tech staffers can replace or upgrade a Blade's system memory, hard disks and CPUs as they would with a standard PC.
Because systems are located centrally, tech staffers can find and service user machines quickly. We were able to remove CPU Blades from their Cages simply by loosening two thumbscrews and pulling the unit out by its handle. Sites deploying the ClearCube solution would do well to purchase extra Blades so that failed units could be replaced immediately.
In the ClearCube architecture, the CPU's power switch is located on the Blade, so users have no way to turn their systems on or off.
This means that sites deploying ClearCube machines will have to curtail user access to the shutdown mechanisms, leaving that control to administrators.