ngestion. NepPC also cannot support running large software. Like the traditional PC, another disadvantage of NetPC is that its hardware has to be upgraded very frequently to meet the ever-growing needs of the user.
The Thin Client is a concept derived from the client/server paradigm. The Thin Client has simpler hardware than a PC, having no local hard disk. It has a large capacity ROM on the main board to store an embedded OS or X-Terminal protocol codes. After being powered on, the Thin Client only runs the embedded OS or the X-Terminal protocol codes on it, and accesses programs and data on servers. The most important attribute is that the computing does not need to be implemented locally because the running of application programs and the processing of data are all done by the remote servers. The client only deals with the reception and displaying of computing results. The Thin Client is a descendant of the dumb terminating technique. The WBT (the Window-Based Terminal) is a type of Thin Client. The Thin Client does not carry on any computing and data processing tasks on the client. It is only responsible for the users interface processing, so the performance requirement of the server is very high. When some applications with intense computing requirements are needed (e.g. a multimedia encoding/decoding application) the maximum load capability of the server will be greatly limited.
In short, as for the various existing computer forms, because of the limitation of their designing paradigm, users have to perceive the location of computing resources including application programs, supporting toolkits, and the OS. Therefore, problems exist such as: the client-side devices have excessive computing dependence on servers; the system has minimal support for multimedia applications; upgrading software is difficult; and manageability is poor. Therefore if the traditional NC system can adopt the paradigm of Transparence Computing, the OS and initial applications will be downloaded from server to local diskless NC client (computer) after being powered on. Thus the NC system could not only stay low-cost but also better support client requests, especially requests for multi-media applications. We termed this solution the MMNC (Manageable Multi-media Network Computer), which is a type of NC system based on the Transparence Computing paradigm. One version of the serial ‘Longxin’ Network Computers, which are being developed by our Network System Group of DCST, Tsinghua University, is based on one prototype of MMNC.
In view of existing computer systems' (legacy NC, Thin Client etc.) limitations, including over-dependency on servers, limited support of multimedia application, software upgrade difficulties, poor management, and poor server load capability, the present invention provides a type of Network Computer system based on Transparence Computing, termed the MMNC system.
This computing system is based on Transparence Computing. It consists of NC clients and a server connected by computer networks that support broadcasting. The mainboard of the client has components as follows: a low power-consumption CPU, host bridge, south bridge, main memory, BIOS, PCI BUS, NIC, and other peripheral adapters; there is no disk and no preinstalled OS on the client; a remote booting chip is set on the client's mainboard which stores codes of the remote booting protocol for remotely downloading and loading OS codes; services like the NFS service, the PXE service, the DHCP service, the TFTP service, the SAMBA service, and varied OS kernel mirrors, applications, documents and data are preset on the server. The system operates orderly according to the following steps to fulfill users' computing requirements: 1) power on and initiation of the local environment and networking; 2) the client detects the remote booting chip under the CPU's control, then starts the booting procedure on the network; 3) the remote booting codes stored in the remote booting chip are executed and the client broadcasts the boot request to the network; 4) after receiving the client