A future tech to enable your PC to do things while powered down..

[Stuart]

UC San Diego and Microsoft Research have come up with a slight variant on a network card.

This variant is essentially a computer with limited processing power and flash memory. It could be used to perform limited tasks (such as downloading torrents and listening for VOIP calls) while the host PC is powered down.

It can either perform these functions itself (assuming code has been written to enable it to do so), or act as a sort of Wake On Lan on steroids, responding to all sorts of events, rather than just a "Magic Packet" sent to the local subnet (the standard WOL signal).

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/04/27/somniloquy/

[JazHaz]

Very interesting, but how does the card obtain its power if the hosting pc is switched off?

Regards,


James

some Asus boards allow you to plug in mp3 players and then play them through the pc output to speakers I spose this is an early tech part of this.

---------- Post added at 12:33 ---------- Previous post was at 12:32 ----------

Originally Posted by JazHaz

Very interesting, but how does the card obtain its power if the hosting pc is switched off?

Unless you actually turn the psu or mains off the pc is actually in a low power state even when off the same as a tv on standby

[JazHaz]

Originally Posted by zing

Unless you actually turn the psu or mains off the pc is actually in a low power state even when off the same as a tv on standby

But would the standby power level be enough to power the network card? Or can the card take its power from the network?

[Raistlin]

Should be. After all, WOL requires a certain amount of power.

[Stuart]

And the card itself may have some form of rechargeable battery to help with it's own power needs.