Re: In-Memory Computing

Thomas Koenig wrote:

Terje Mathisen <terje.mathisen@tmsw.no> schrieb:
 

You typically start with shared atomic operations and very simple
computation, like a LOCK XADD, then once you are on this slippery slope
you quickly decide to add more advanced capabilities, quickly ending up
with something like Bunny Chang's distributed virtual machine which can
securely distribute its code anywhere in the cluster.

 What is Bunny Chang's distributed virtual machine?
 

Oops, typo! I meant Andrew "Bunnie" Huang, not Chang. :-(
He's the guy who got famous for reverse engineering all the encrypted Xbox stuff. He's done a lot since then, including one time when he talked about hacking thumb drives to do basically anything:
Every single flash drive contains a full 32-bit CPU, upon first boot it surveys all the connected flash blocks and test them, eventually deciding how many are good and then picking the correct size of the drive.
There is nothing that prevents such a cpu to be reprogrammed to also act as a keyboard or mouse input device, or to hide half the available disk space and use it to keep copies of everything that gets deleted from the visible part.
Terje
--
- <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no>
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"