Microsoft Patents A Modular PC With Stackable Components (venturebeat.com)

Microsoft has patented a "modular computing device" that would enable people to put together the exact PC components they want, allowing for replacement of certain parts rather than forcing people to buy entire new computers when they want upgrades. Microsoft applied for the patent in July 2015, and it was published earlier this week, on February 11.

Comments

Where's the patent?

[CajunArson]

I see a patent publication, which occurs automatically for practically any U.S. patent unless the patentee expressly requests that the patent not be published and relinquishes the right to file the patent in any country other than the U.S.

As for the rest of the article, I'm not overly interested in the analysis of somebody who doesn't actually know what a patent is.

Re:Where's the patent?

[davester666]

How exactly is this different from what Google has been showing for some time with their plug-together cell phone? I mean, besides all the components being physically bigger.

Re:Where's the patent?

[Sarten-X]

Project Ara has components that plug into a baseboard. This patent covers a stack of components, notably beginning with a hinged display. While it's possible for Microsoft to argue that Ara infringes on some of the claims (namely #19, which lacks the hinged display but covers toolless swappable components), the earlier release of Project Ara's details makes such a lawsuit unlikely to succeed.

1. A computing device comprising: a display modular component including a housing, a display device physically and communicatively coupled to the housing via a hinge, and one or more display hardware elements disposed within the housing and configured to output a display for display the display device; and a computing modular component including a housing that is physically and communicatively coupled to the display modular component, a processing system disposed within the housing, and memory disposed within the housing, the processing system configured to execute instructions stored by the processing system to generate a user interface for display by the display device of the display modular component, the processing system and the memory being swappable within the housing of the computing modular component.

17. A modular computing system comprising: a plurality of modular components forming a stackable arrangement one to another, wherein: each of the modular components has a respective housing and is interchangeable into and out of the stackable arrangement in a swappable manner; the stackable arrangement forms a communicative and removable physical coupling between the plurality of modular components; and the plurality of modular components include at least: a processing system housing including a processing system disposed therein; and a memory housing including the memory disposed therein.

19. A method comprising: obtaining a plurality of modular components, each of the modular components having a respective housing configured to form a stackable arrangement, one to another; stacking the plurality of modular components to form a computing device; and swapping at least one of a plurality of housings disposed within at least one of the respective modular components without using tools, the plurality of housings including: a processing system housing including a processing system within the housing of the at least one of the respective modular components; and a memory housing including a memory within the housing of the at least one of the respective modular components.

Re:Where's the patent?

[davester666]

Really, Project Ara + a practitioner skilled in the field should == invalid patent.

For the the US patent office, they will likely assign someone who has never used a computer before, and will believe MS has described some kind of magic machine.

Re:Where's the patent?

[PixetaledPikachu]

More like http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/accessories/buythinkpadstack/. Which you can actually buy today! Or order..

Re:Where's the patent?

[gweihir]

Sounds like a rip-off of PC-104, i.e. they are a few decades late.

Re:Where's the patent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Put that url into a search engine. This link should not link back to this article, and its informative too.

Re:Where's the patent?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to post this anyway...
http://hothardware.com/reviews/lenovo-stack-review-modular-mainstays-for-the-road-warrior

So here's your parent poster's link
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/accessories/buythinkpadstack/

Re:Where's the patent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Er -- what's happened to auto-URLs. Maybe because I'm posting as AC

Re:Where's the patent?

[invictusvoyd]

From :http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/accessories/buythinkpadstack/

Wireless Router - Bluetooth Speaker External Hard Drive - Mobile Power Bank

There is no "compute" component. The stack looks clumsy.

Re:Where's the patent?

[Anonymous Coward]

BeauHD is a fucking retard. Look at the other articles he has posted today. All miserable failure attempts at trolling clickbait. Enough said.

Re:Where's the patent?

[Anonymous Coward]

So the article mentions that Acer has had a product on this line available since September 2015, Microsoft applied last July just two months before Acer revealed it's machine. That tells me Acer was working on the design long before Microsoft applied for their patent. Acer has prior Art on the market.

Re:Where's the patent?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a Patent application, not a patent
Modular Computing Device
United States Patent Application 20160041582
Inventors: Kim; Young Soo; (Bellevue, WA) ; Escolin; Timothy G.; (Seattle, WA)
Applicant: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
Filed: July 7, 2015

link to United States Patent Application 20160041582

This application has a long way to go before it can be issued as a patent.
There is likely much prior art (some patented, and some published knowledge) which will make the scope of this patent very narrow.
I suspect it this patent application survives examination, it will be applicable to a small market. Expansion blocks for cellphones?

Re:Where's the patent?

[Trax3001BBS]

Sounds like a rip-off of PC-104, i.e. they are a few decades late.

Microsoft's smiley face patent?
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacg...

"I would have expected to see something like this suggested by one of our more immature community members as a joke on Slashdot, and probably would have chuckled at the absurdity of the notion. We now appear to be living in a world where even the most laughable paranoid fantasies about commercially controlling simple social concepts are being outdone in the real world by well-funded armies of lawyers on behalf of some of the most powerful companies on the planet," http://www.zdnet.com/article/m...

Re:Where's the patent?

[Trax3001BBS]

So the article mentions that Acer has had a product on this line available since September 2015, Microsoft applied last July just two months before Acer revealed it's machine. That tells me Acer was working on the design long before Microsoft applied for their patent. Acer has prior Art on the market.

Acer is a Microsoft puppet, what they have come up with they would attribute to MS.

Re:Where's the patent?

[jrumney]

How exactly is this different from what Google has been showing for some time with their plug-together cell phone? I mean, besides all the components being physically bigger.

Seriously, how is this different than ISA slots? People putting together parts to make the computer they want, whatever will they come up with next?

Re:Where's the patent?

[AK Marc]

http://www.cnet.com/news/hp-re...

It was cuting edge at the time (1998), but the HP Sojourn should be prior art for this. It was a laptop with a dock (well, multiple docks). The base laptop was thin and light, and didn't have much I/O. You put on the I/O slice, and you have a CD drive, video ports, serial and more. And you can then put on another slice, and expanded battery slice. The ultrabook was expandable to a full desktop replacement (almost).

And there have been other computers to do the same, just with everything in a chassis, not external slices. So this is an incremental change, and an obvious one at that. But that's how patents work in the US.

prior art?

[ihtoit]

EISA/ISA/PCI/PCIE/MCA/LPC/NuBus/PATA/SATA/PB/GSC/HSC/VLB/VME/QBus?

I know there's a LOT I've missed out, but you get the point. I've been building my own PCs since 1988. All using modular components.

Re:prior art?

[Irate Engineer]

EISA/ISA/PCI/PCIE/MCA/LPC/NuBus/PATA/SATA/PB/GSC/HSC/VLB/VME/QBus?

I know there's a LOT I've missed out, but you get the point. I've been building my own PCs since 1988. All using modular components.

Yeah, but did you patent the process? No?

MS will be cracking down on this sort of socialist hooliganism, get ready and assume the position!

Re:prior art?

[the_Bionic_lemming]

I am currently building a pc that is including components.

And I don't want to stack them.

Re:prior art?

[shubus]

I've been building PC's since the mid 80's with the above mentioned components. So what's to happen now, Microsoft going to try and sue everybody who builds their own PC's? "Prior Art" isn't going let this fly.....we'll need to see that patent.

Re:prior art?

[Sarten-X]

None of those are actually prior art for this patent. They're similar in concept, but don't actually come close to the implementation that Microsoft is patenting. A closer instance would be Project Ara, but even that's quite the stretch to say it would invalidate this patent, as Ara involves multiple components attached to a single surface, and this patent describes stacking components.

Remember, folks: Patents are specific. Just naming a bunch of similar ideas is not "prior art".

Re:prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM IceCube

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/04/12/17/1546228/interchangeable-data-storage-bricks

Re:prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed that GP's examples don't really fit this, but what about the "lids" on the NUC's that Intel has been building for the last two revisions?

Re:prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like an Arduino? Base computer board. Stack on a wireless board. Stack on a SD card board. Stack on a TFT board. Etc.

Re:prior art?

[davester666]

YOU WILL STACK THEM! And you will like it!

    Random crap to permit the post...

Re:prior art?

[Sarten-X]

This patent's components include housings.

Re:prior art?

[Sarten-X]

Microsoft's patent covers devices that are contained in a housing. Replacing the housing components could easily be argued to fall outside the patent's scope.

Re:prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, these days it's first to patent not first to invent. So even if you could find prior art that directly applies to this, if THEY didn't patent it, MS is home free.

Re:prior art?

[Sarten-X]

No, this is a common misconception.

The "first-to-file" rule only applies if there is a dispute as to which invention happened first. If you can find an example of such art that was first described after July 7, 2015, it would not be "prior" to this patent. Under the "first-to-invent" rule, art that was described after July 7, 2015 could still be considered "prior art" if it could be shown that it was invented before this patented art was invented. Of course, that involves a lengthy discovery process, which ends up being ridiculously expensive, and it runs contrary to the goal of the patent system, which is to make technology public knowledge.

Re:prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not any more. Now, you have to pay royalty, if you want to upgrade your disk.

Re:prior art?

[dmbasso]

Wow, now I see. It is indeed revolutionary!

Re:prior art?

[Sarten-X]

It doesn't need to be revolutionary to be patented. It just needs to advance the state of the art.

Re:prior art?

[AJWM]

It also has to be "non obvious". Stacking boxes is about as far from non-obvious as you can get, even chimpanzees can do it.

Re:prior art?

[Scoth]

I wish more Slashdotters understood this. Patents are ridiculously, specifically specific. I worked for a company that was known for owning several patents in a very specific, niche market and got to take part in writing up some proposals for new ones. I learned a lot about how to make the verbiage both specific enough to fit the idea, but also general enough to try to prevent someone from tacking on "on a mobile device" or "with a specific enclosure" and doing the same. There was also a lot of throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what stuck. I didn't work there long enough to have anything granted in my name, but it may still happen.

All this patent has to do is be sufficiently different from anything else patented to be granted. Doesn't matter that there's something else logically very similar, or even functionally the same, as long as the implementation and specifics are unique. Even if it comes down to "Exactly the same as previous modular computers, BUT WITH MAGNETS!"

Re:prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is not the spirit of the patent system, that is abuse of the system. Kind of why we have been bitching since BPP was passed 25'ish year ago.

Re:prior art?

[gl4ss]

scsi.

if it's just stacked in random order then any daisychainable-multi-use bus... usb too.

stupid patent. the IDEA is worth fucking zero dollars. it's been had by many people many times. getting such a thing to sale from multiple hw providers.. now that would be novel.

Re:prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Nobody ever considered putting circuitry in a housing? If I got an Arduino, my first thought would be what to put it in.

Re:prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been demonstrated that "stacking" stuff is not original. Putting machinery in a box does not advance the state of the art, it makes people say "Why didn't you put in something?"

Re:prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

So if I go down to my local PC shop right now I should see aisles and aisles of computer components that can be stacked, chimpanzee style, to form a fully functional computer. Moron.

Re:prior art?

[Bert64]

Stacked generally not, but connected together to form a fully functional computer absolutely.. Some components can be stacked, some can be daisy chained, some inserted into slots etc. The idea that they could all be stacked is just a slightly different way of connecting them together.

Re:prior art?

[Bert64]

SGI NUMALink, the altix 350 series were 2u dual socket servers that could be stacked together with numalink cables, with the result being a cluster that showed up as a single multiprocessor host running a single kernel.

Re:prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

ATX, IBM already did it! X86 Intel did it already!... MS got some explaining to do!

Re:prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, folks: Patents are specific. Just naming a bunch of similar ideas is not "prior art".

Up until the point where the next person shows up and wants to make a modular computer.
Then it will not be sufficient to be as different from Microsofts solution as they are from previous implementation. They will have to either actively use previous solutions so that there is prior art to point at or they will have to go out of their way to not appear to be similar to Microsofts solution.

Re:prior art?

[davester666]

That's the problem. Just because something hasn't been patented before is NOT sufficient for it to be patented [at least, according to the law].

They are to be non-obvious to a skilled practitioner in the art of whatever.

This is pretty much "how can we do Project ARA using full size computer components". The idea that "stacking" is somehow non-obvious is beyond ridiculous.

Perhaps the only thing that Microsoft should be able to do is submit it as a design patent, so the specific sizes/shapes of how these components fit together.

Re:prior art?

[wvmarle]

Which is why, without even looking at the patent, I'm sure it's not about stacking blocks.

Re:prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the article TFA links to you'd see this is about a system where Joe Sixpack can just stack a few (lego-like?) components, not the type of modularity we currently have.

Re:prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah but were those modular?

pc104

Re: prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 10 now stacks perfectly inside my shitcan. As it heads towards the dump I shed a tear.

Re:prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

I seem to remember there was a spectrum add-on that consisted of stack-able pizza-box like modules, I think it was primarily intended as a ram expansion but they did an assortment of various industry-standard interfaces like RS232 / SCSI

Re:prior art?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I mentioned before that Slashdot has spent years breeding ignorance about how patents work. This +5, Informative is such a great example.

I know there's a LOT I've missed out, but you get the point. I've been building my own PCs since 1988. All using modular components.

This person replied believing that Microsoft had patented any and all modular configurations, as opposed to a very specific implementation that will only apply to its own standard. It's not his fault, either. Typically when Slashdot posts a patent story the headline reads something like this: "Apple Patents Page Turn Animation", leading to a discussion thread where people cry 'prior art!' and rattle off all the zillions of times they've seen any old page turn animation. It should read: "Apple Patents a Specific Page Turn Animation", which would have lead to a much more fruitful discussion. But, nah, waving pitchforks over patents spins the ad-counter. Anyway, this article did at least add the word 'a' to the title, but it's so similar to the sensationalist bullshit we've seen before that it's not very noticeable. I don't blame anyone for missing the distinction.

So, to answer his question: No, none of what he you described is prior art. But since the article didn't bother to link to the patent, and I'm too lazy to dig it up, the critical bit of information about what you WOULD need to find isn't going to turn up in this post. If the patent says that the modular PC requires a green Cabbage Patch Doll wearing suspenders, then you have to find previous PCs with green Cabbage Patch Dolls wearing suspenders. A PC with a red Cabbage Patch doll wouldn't count.

Re:prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

Patents are ridiculously, specifically specific.

No, they are not. That's the whole problem.

Re:prior art?

[jellomizer]

I remember my father had brought home some point of sale computers that had a scsi or some other type of module on the top of the case where you can stack upgrades. That was around the early 1990s and they were already too out of date for me to use.

The key problem we have is the upgradable PC has its limits.

There come a point where you need to swap out the entire thing because components become a bottleneck to everything else.

Back in the early 2000 the hay day of custom PC they tended to last only 4-5 years. Because there will be a component that is critical that get out of date.

Re:prior art?

[sjames]

No, but if you shop for PC-104, you'll find just that. It's ancient tech from the '80s.

Re:prior art?

[pipingguy]

Didn't the patent language used to be something like, "...non-obvious to someone reasonably informed about the field of business..."

Re:prior art?

[Big Hairy Ian]

Lenovo did the same thing last year http://www.cnet.com/uk/product...

Re:prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

Design patents specifically disallows functional design.
So if you have a design like stacking components so they "fit together"; it means it is functional and therefor is not allowed a design patent.

Re:prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.vintage-icl-computers.com/icl30

ICL DRS300, modular units stacking horizontally.

Re:prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fighter aircraft have been using computer systems in the form of modular boxes since basically forever.

Re:prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's just that whoever posted this to Slashdot has never put together his own PC, and thus thinks that part is what is new here.

It's not.

The new thing is that rather than needing three screw drivers (Philips, flat and Torx), each component comes in its own enclosure, and you just stack these on top of each other. Fun thing is that they also though a great idea would be to have the monitor be a part of this, turning the whole thing into an iMac-style thing, but one which gets taller with each component you add. So, if you build an enthusiast PC, you'll end up with the monitor two feet above the desk. I guess the neck pain resulting from that is intended to drive the sale of Surface tablets.

Re:prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's funny is that if this story were about handheld sized PCs that fit in your pocket (a.k.a. "phones") it would have been legitimately interesting. A big reason that all the phones on the market suck, is that they don't face competition from build-it-yourself.

Re:prior art?

[c]

None of those are stackable.

Arduino shields would be closer to the idea, but they don't connect with magnets and I'd assume the Microsoft approach is more like a bus with some auto-discovery than a collection of GPIO pins. So, not prior art.

Re:prior art?

[dave420]

You consider chimpanzees stacking boxes to be analogous to a system of modular PC components housed in boxes which provide interconnects for a data bus and power? I think you are giving chimpanzees a bit too much credit. I know it makes for a pithy argument, but surely you can see there is no real substance to it.

Re:prior art?

[cb88]

No it has to be non obvious to someone *IN* their field of expertise... otherwise it's just patenting something that would be obvious to any expert and thus does not advance the field.

Re:prior art?

[Dragonslicer]

I don't know if it used to be something different, but the current phrase is "person of ordinary skill in the art".

Re:prior art?

[Dragonslicer]

It's even a bit worse than what you said. Microsoft didn't get a patent for a modular PC, they applied for a patent for a modular PC. Slashdot also frequently neglects to say whether the article is about a granted patent or a patent application. In this case, of course, TFA also leaves out this important bit of information.

TFA does link to the application on the USPTO web site, though. You can get more information by going to PAIR and searching for the application number, 14/792992.

Re:prior art?

[The-Ixian]

Something tells me that this has something to do with Azure.

Their cloud platform utilizes standard shipping container-sized modules full of air-cooled, modular components that they can stack up (or remove) to an outdoor datacenter arrangement.

Re:prior art?

[bondsbw]

Right, it's not like I can stack a few laptops on top of each other and they work as the patent describes.

Re: prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about arduino and arduino shields? Extendable and stackable. Not quite a PC though, but the Pi may have something similar, and that would be a PC.

I would be very OK with it if they did it for laptops. I would actually love it if someone did that

Re:prior art?

[transami]

Looks exactly the same to me.

Patent law has become degenerate. It no longer has any real application to its original intent of protecting innovators. It is now simply another market where any notion can be ligated for the benefit of wealthy commercial interests. My favorite example, a patent for "*" to mean "any characters", i.e. a wild card for search, was issued in 2011.

Re:prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

But, but they want all the positions! Super-green?

Re:prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

All this patent has to do is be sufficiently different from anything else patented to be granted. Doesn't matter that there's something else logically very similar, or even functionally the same, as long as the implementation and specifics are unique. Even if it comes down to "Exactly the same as previous modular computers, BUT WITH MAGNETS!"

You might be correct from a "lawyerese" point of view. But I foolishly thought that the idea of a patent also had to be for something "innovative" that was not "obvious to someone versed in the art". Apple had a similar concept of stacked SCSI drives in the 80's, putting that together with something like a standard PC component backplane should be an obvious extension to any hardware engineer. And thus not patentable.

Re:prior art?

[stephows]

even chimpanzees can do it.

Steve Balmer's monkey dance?

Re:prior art?

[ihtoit]

Nope. Prior art proves obviousness, hence invalidates the patent.

Thank you, come again.

Re:prior art?

[ihtoit]

Yes, I have a collection of (mostly homemade) Spectrum expansion cards, including but not limited to: 3-way bus splitter, 16K RAM Pak, 128K RAM PAK, RS232 interface, acoustic coupler interface, 3" diskette drive, serial printer interface... The RS232, printer and diskette interfaces all have passthrough connectors, so they are properly stackable and interfacing with any of them is a simple case of PEEKing and POKEing.

Re:prior art?

[ihtoit]

the one thing in a PC that has ALWAYS been the game-ender for upgrades has been the backplane.

Get something like the PC104 platform, the backplane consists of the serial bus and a power rail, that's pretty much it. EVERYTHING else stacks on it (and it apparently doesn't even matter which order it stacks in!), and it all runs off a common power supply. THAT is future proofed. Want to upgrade to a faster processor with more cores? Replace an old embedded board with a top-of-the-range $300 one rather than fork out $600 on the midrange ATX gaming board with five pounds of copper on it AND your $800 processor. You don't have to replace anything else because the bus specification is unchanged.

Re:prior art?

[ihtoit]

didn't Google or Motorola have a play with modular (ie pluggable) phones not so long back?

Re:prior art?

[jrumney]

Is this a design patent? If not, then I don't see how whether they are stacked or stuck into slots on a perpendicular board comes into it. Changing the form factor does not make your idea novel.

Re:prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

Arduino + ( Stacking ) Shield, i.e a computing device environment + whatever hardware you want to add (storage, wireless, etc).
Boom. Prior Art. done.

Re:prior art?

[Agripa]

and this patent describes stacking components.

Like a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A?

Re:prior art?

[rhpyle]

Indeed - How is this even patent-able? If the various bus specs over the years have not been modular, whatever were they?? I have added modules to my systems ever since the old days when I swore to never buy an Apple product because of the closed architecture. I have a card and a drive sitting on my desk waiting to be installed - and BOTH are certainly modules (well they are definitely not discrete components). {rant} I thought a module was an integrated collection of components that could be added to other modules within a system. It's all the fault of the English language! No absolutes and multiple meanings for the same word in different contexts. It's a miracle that we communicate at all! {/rant}

Patent system is broken

[Anonymous Coward]

Did ⦠did they just patent the computer?

I hope they sue Newegg for aiding infringement, then I will have even moee reason for shopping there

Re:Patent system is broken

[SumDog]

The patent office approves everything these days. It doesn't matter unless you try to defend it in court.

New Zealand did the right thing by banning software patents.

Re:Patent system is broken

[ajakk]

Says someone who has clearly not tried to prosecute any patents before the USPTO. Their approval rate for software patents has dropped a huge amount. Plus, this isn't even a patent, just a patent application. It hasn't been examined by the patent office at all.

Re:Patent system is broken

[houstonbofh]

This is not even approved yet. It is just a broad application to patent the computer. :) When the rest of the world is going towards compute sticks and NUCs.

Prior Art Time

[Crashmarik]

Wells American was doing this back in the 80s

https://books.google.com/books...

Re:Prior Art Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention Commodoore's Amiga, aka "Gods Gift To Furrys".

Re:Prior Art Time

[donaldm]

I thought I remembered a modular computer back in the 1980's. Someone should tell Microsoft they just reinvented the wheel.

On P14: "File Shuttle 4.1" gets file transfer rate of 3MB/minute. Wow I really have to get that product. :-)

Re:Prior Art Time

[Jeremi]

Sure, but it was Texas Instruments that really pushed this design to its full potential.

Re:Prior Art Time

[Tablizer]

And reinvent bankruptcy, hopefully, for MS. That company is gone.

Re:Prior Art Time

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as they take Apple with them

Re:Prior Art Time

[Tablizer]

All large companies seem to grow into dicks eventually.

Re:Prior Art Time

[mooterSkooter]

Please explain?

Re:Prior Art Time

[clickclickdrone]

Atari too had modular systems on the drawing board:
http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/concepts/1200/A300-4.jpg/

Acorn RiscPC

[John Bokma]

Custom plastic-based design with a 'slice' feature which allows extra case modules to be added to increase internal expansion space. Each slice adds 2 podule bays at the rear, and two drive bays (one 3.5 inch, one 5.25 inch) at the front

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Images with multiple slices: https://www.google.com/search?...

Re:Acorn RiscPC

[Anonymous Coward]

Upgradable to include the kitchen sink, of course.

Re:Acorn RiscPC

[ihtoit]

they were awesome machines. My first was the 233 with a DX/40 copro.

Re:Acorn RiscPC

[Anonymous Coward]

You can even see the one with the 2-slice toaster in it on your image link !

Re:So many questions, no answers...

[110010001000]

Oprah killed Scalia? I KNEW it!

PC/104

[Joe_Dragon]

http://pc104.org/

Re:PC/104

[PinkyGigglebrain]

Damn! beat me too it. :) I used to work with embedded systems and as soon as I read the title I thought PC-104.

Nice

[Koby77]

Congradulations on inventing the Sega32x!

Re:Nice

[Blaskowicz]

a lot of stacking in there too : Sega CD, Megadrive, 32X, Action Replay, Sonic and Knuckles, earlier Sonic game..

This one sounds real! http://imgur.com/7HrfvtZ

Re:Nice

[Blaskowicz]

In the good old days games used to misspell that word, and we didn't care, the game was fun. It was hard enough so that not ever seeing the end screen was a possibility, and was common. Now every game gives you infinite lives, retry from a very nearby position, hints, cover, going around the bad guy in 3D space - here is a scary guy with a machette but you run around or jump on a meter-high wall and he can't get you.

Now who's the retard?

Re:Nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Browsers and phones come with spell check now. You should try it!

VentureBeat

[110010001000]

I just spent 10 minutes browsing that ventureBeat site. What a bunch of drivel those articles were.

Re:So many questions, no answers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Scalia was found with a pillow over his head with his "bed clothes unwrinkled:"

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/Texas-ranch-owner-recalls-Scalia-s-last-hours-6830372.php

It does make you wonder if the Republicans decided now was the time to distract the media from the Hillary email scandal release late Friday. They want her to win since they know they can beat her.

Re: So many questions, no answers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Adults having fun. Can't let a SC justice go down in history like the Kung Fu master ;)

Welcome to the 1980's

[clovis]

In the 1980's there was a company "Convergent Technologies" that made a snap-together systems with separate boxes for CPU, Disk, graphics cards etc.

Here's some pictures:
http://www.computinghistory.or...

Some history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

And their patents:
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge...

However, the Microsoft patents are for stackable components that use a flux fountain.
The Convergent Technologies component boxes are side-by-side and aren't held together by magnets.

Re:Welcome to the 1980's

[Anonymous Coward]

> In the 1980's there was a company "Convergent Technologies" that made a snap-together systems with separate boxes for CPU, Disk, graphics cards etc.

The ICL DRS300 system was similar and used a SCSI bus to connect the units. I still have a couple of dozen units here.

http://www.vintage-icl-computers.com/icl31

Re:So many questions, no answers...

[Anonymous Coward]

the Republicans know that ted cruz can't win and trump is to far.

U WOT M8?

[ArylAkamov]

FINALLY, I won't be forced to throw away yet ANOTHER desktop just because I want more ram or hard drive space!

I wonder if some day we will be able to upgrade our processor or power supply? Maybe even add in extra fans for cooling!

Re:U WOT M8?

[sumdumass]

I'm thinking this patent is really designed as a docking station for the surface pro and similar type tablets in an attempt to turn them into a desktop type computer with lots more power. The stacking sounds a lot like how the keyboard connects to it.

Re:U WOT M8?

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you change the CPU, Windows will say you need to buy a new license!

How is this any different...

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this any different from stacking shields on RPi's or Arduinos?

won't work

[Gravis Zero]

i realize they are trying to make hardware upgrades easy for the average joe but they a missing the fundamental problem of upgrades: finding out which part you want. having an idiot select which type of DDR RAM they want won't be any easier just because now the RAM comes in an easy to plug in box.

Re:won't work

[Jeremi]

having an idiot select which type of DDR RAM they want won't be any easier just because now the RAM comes in an easy to plug in box.

Well, it could work if that particular type of easy-plug-in-box only supports one single type of RAM, then you can't go wrong; if you can physically plug it in, then you know it will work.

Of course the downside of that is that you'll never be able to use any new kinds of RAM that come out in the future; whether or not that is a problem for you depends on how much RAM technology will continue to evolve, and whether or not you ever feel the need for faster RAM at some point.

Re:won't work

[Blaskowicz]

The idea is likely to replace the entire CPU + RAM box. Not far-fetched given all the mobile and embedded stuff that has RAM permanently attached in one way or another. See HBM memory (on graphics cards for now) for the probable future of high performance combined CPU + GPU.
Of course you have to pay attention and not get ripped off with a 2GB or 4GB device (*gasp* 4GB Mac) while you intended your thing to be awesome and modern.

Re:won't work

[Blaskowicz]

RAM in a box would be expensive and slow. Let's say you have a 40 Gbps interface or even a 100 Gbps one to connect it, then the bandwith would be mediocre and the latency worse still. You can put a really fast SSD on there though or non-volatile memory that is sort of half-way between RAM and SSD, such as 3D XPoint.

TI99/4a?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone not familiar, go check out how the TI99/4a add-on modules used to stack (left to right, not top down). Someone connected them all together at one point - spanned several feet.

Okay, I *KNOW* there is prior art here...

[mark-t]

In the 1980's, I remember seeing a mainframe computer which had completely modular stackable components.... they plugged into eachother almost like lego, and apparently with few exceptions, the components could be placed in different order. I remember at the time thinking that it was kind of like the ISA bus on a PC, only instead of some fixed number of them you could just keep on adding more components to get whatever functionality you desired.

Texas Instruments did this in the 1980s

[pauljlucas]

Texas Instruments had the TI-99/4A that has that dubious "sidecar" extension bus:

The TI-99/4's original expansion concept was that peripherals would be connected serially to the console and each other, in a "daisy-chain" fashion. The "sidecar" expansion units can be connected together in a continuing chain, but can rapidly occupy an entire desktop and cause crashes ...

Re:Texas Instruments did this in the 1980s

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus fucking Christ, did Slashdot suddenly go "full stupid" since the handover? How is an add-on port on the side of a computer the same thing as a computer system that can be fully assembled and modified with nothing but stack-able components?

Re:Texas Instruments did this in the 1980s

[Khyber]

Are you a fucking retard? The only goddamned difference is the ORIENTATION. I've run a TI 99/4A vertically stacked using the extension bus.

So much for the patent. Those magnets holding it are of no actual purpose when the bus connector should pretty much handle it all, assuming it was built worth a shit. Hinged screen for the top? Nothing new, laptops do this already and have extension bases with modular components THAT STACKS VERTICALLY.

Logical failure detected. Detach yourself from mommy's PC and reattach yourself to her titty.

Re:Texas Instruments did this in the 1980s

[drinkypoo]

More recently, a bus that could be used this way was implemented on the Commodore Amiga computers. The system bus was made available on the side of Amiga 1000 and 500 computers. Not only did they have daisy-chainable side-expansion boxes for these machines, but you could get them with Zorro slots in them so you could add cards on to the outside, but in enclosures

Re:Texas Instruments did this in the 1980s

[QuietLagoon]

Are you a fucking retard?

Now, there's an intelligent reply.

Re:Texas Instruments did this in the 1980s

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's his linkedin page if you want a laugh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-mcquown-b63b74ba

Re:Texas Instruments did this in the 1980s

[Khyber]

Hey, at least I've got credentials to show, including fucking Google.

What do you have?

Not shit that we can see!

Re:Texas Instruments did this in the 1980s

[Anonymous Coward]

Aw, the little boy talks tough on the internet. Fact is that you are a loser.

Don't forget IBM PCjr!

[ClayJar]

I never had one, but a friend whose dad worked for IBM did, complete with a whole stack of sidecar expansions. It actually looked rather entertaining as wide as it ended up.

Admittedly, they stacked to the side and were only for expansion, but they did stack (or daisy chain, if you use more mellifluous terminology).

Re:Don't forget IBM PCjr!

[Scoth]

I have an IBM PC Convertible in the closet, which did similar but stacked backwards. I only have the serial and parallel port addon, but there were several including an entire printer. Got kind of comically large with all of them.

WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

How the fuck can anyone patent something that has been in common use for many decades? Modular computing goes back to at least the 1940's. While many designs may not be known to most people, there's one modular computer system that everyone should be aware of - the IBM Personal Computer system, from which all modern desktop and server systems, other than Apples, stem.

Re: WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

How the fuck could a slashtard be so ignorant that they didn't know that patents are granted for implementations of an idea, not the notion itself.

Re: WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

MS seems intent on killing the PC biz for anyone but them, HP and Dell.
This patent will probably mean that a good number of other companies will stop making nice bits of kit that might fall under this patent.
Along with Windows 10 and their fiasco in the Mobile space they do seem to be floundering but this could be the thing that gets them back on track

At least I am in a Microsoft free zone now that I have retired so they can go and play with themselves for all I care.

Lenovo Ideacenter stack

[Anonymous Coward]

The article itself lists some, but even my Lenovo IdeaCenter is a stack:
http://www.computershopper.com/desktops/reviews/lenovo-ideacentre-q190/%28page%29/2

I'm not really sure why this was granted, presumably its a very narrow claim, that's being presented as if it was a broad claim for Microsoft to troll companies with.

Colossal Failure

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I predict this will be a colossal failure, except perhaps for business environments. And unless it's priced competitively with existing hardware offerings, I think it'll be a failure there too. I just don't see the appeal, and it's almost sure to be encumbered with proprietary stuff- connectors, interfaces, form factor, etc etc.

This kind of thing has been tried before and met with minimal success. Google even floated a phone that would be built with snap-together parts (Project Ara), and that went nowhere too. A company called Phonebloks tried it too, and I don't think it ever saw the light of day either.

Re: Colossal Failure

[Anonymous Coward]

It's actually ingenious for corporate IT, as the number of stacked blocks you have will be a status symbol. I'm an applied mathematician, so get an extra block that's got some high performance parallel processing. The bosses will get extra blocks that will have dasblinkenlightz, but, importantly, Sally in accounting will have an extra block with extra RAM because she has never actually ever closed a file she's opened from a shared drive, nor will she.

Re:Colossal Failure

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I don't see the point. Modern computers are way more powerful than most people need, what's the point of upgrading one component? Every few years the industry comes up with a new bus or socket architectures, you're not going to be able to upgrade those modularly.
 
  The smart strategy is to make your PC last as long as you can, when it can't keep up anymore buy a whole new unit with modern components. Modularity will just add complexity, bulk, and expense, with no benefit that anyone will care about.

Re:Colossal Failure

[wvmarle]

If the patent has been awarded, that's a success, not a failure.

Now whether any future product line based on this patent may be economically viable is a whole different issue, and not the one at stake here.

Re:Colossal Failure

[Anonymous Coward]

If the patent has been awarded, that's a success, not a failure.

Depends on whether you regards it from the point of view of Microsoft or from the perspective of mankind, doesn't it?

Re:Colossal Failure

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought strong magnets were banned at airline screening points and on jet planes. I guess that is a huge market segment that will never...

When I first read the headline I thought Dell computers, or Cromenco of CP/M fame or Sinclair Computer. Now if it was a patent for a magnetic coffee waste tray, I could understand.

Re: Colossal Failure

[Anonymous Coward]

And I will make my own blocks, containing nothing but air, stacking them higher and higher up into the sky. I build my own castle filled with the air. And my colleagues will all think: "Wow, look at all them blockz, he must really be important!". Even my boss will think: "Wow, look at all them blockz, I can not afford to lose him. I will give him a bonus for every block!". People will hear about the guy with the many blocks and want to be customer of that company that hires the guy with the many blocks! Businesses will be competing to hire me, because they want the guy with so many blocks! But then all of the sudden, the windows are open and someone didn't close the door. A silly little wind enters the room and there go my blocks, floating in the wind as if they are nothing but blocks filled with air. It was such a good idea, but it was nothing but inflated boxes.

Re:Colossal Failure

[swb]

I can't see it working in business environments, either, except as being some new twist on the blade center.

Computers that exceed the performance requirements of the typical business user are already so powerful and inexpensive that it's difficult to imagine any reason to expand some user's computer. I think a lot of present day desktops with solid state disks will probably have enough power that they will exceed the supported lifetime of the operating system installed on them.

About the only place this starts to make sense is with a system that might resemble a smartphone core that can be snapped into a laptop which can then be docked into a desktop. But existing mobile processors aren't well suited to desktop usage, the x86 architecture doesn't lend itself to bolting on additional CPUs and RAM in external cabinets, and smartphones don't have the storage capacity to make such a system truly portable if the users regular data isn't stored on the device or in the cloud.

What might make it interesting would be if the modular components were in effect computers in themselves, and a fully stacked system actually resembled a cluster with the "core" working as kind of root OS and hypervisor manager, and the extended blocks able to supply cpu and ram for user processes, but all transparent to the end user who just see it as a unified desktop.

Re: Colossal Failure

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot "Apps!" and "Moo!"
So now it's "blocks"?

Re:Colossal Failure

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

If the patent has been awarded, that's a success, not a failure.

These days you could get a patent for pissing in the shower, it doesn't mean that it'll meet with widespread industry adoption or that you'll ever make a nickel off it.

Someone got a patent for a Motorized Ice Cream Cone, but I don't see it for sale anywhere. Is it a "success"?

If getting a patent is your metric for "success", perhaps you need to raise the bar a bit.

Re:Colossal Failure

[Anonymous Coward]

connectors, interfaces, form factor,

That is the problem. A low cost, standard and sufficiently fast (optical) interconnect is still missing, although TB3 is a good start. At least four times faster interconnect would be an even better start, but the cheap optical integration technologies are still living only in the labs.

Re:Colossal Failure

[wvmarle]

It still is, when it comes to a patent application. File patent > get it awarded > success. File patent > get it rejected > fail.

Now whether you can make a successful business around it, well, that's a next step. You can't always predict whether something patentable is also sellable.

Was the display hinged?

[Namarrgon]

If not, then it's a different device than described in the patent, since Claim 1 specifies separate display & computing modules, with the display itself being connected by a hinge. Think "stackable Surface".

It's a patent; only the patent claims matter. Even if TFS has a clickbait headline.

Why not just more computers

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows could boast that it is making Beowulf clusters.

Re: Why not just more computers

[Anonymous Coward]

But does it run systemd/linux?

Amiga Walker prototype

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't this remind a bit of the Amiga "Walker" prototype shown a couple of decades ago?

Re:Amiga Walker prototype

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds exactly like the Walker:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Walker

Gee, memories are short these days

[Wizardess]

About 20 years ago my partner took me into his workplace at UniSys in Mission Viejo. He showed me a nice modular computer system, video module, disk drive module, CPU module, memory module, etc. It was designed some 30+ years ago now by Convergent Technologies. Burroughs bought then and sold the computers for a few years. And there was still a working example at the UniSys labs in Mission Viejo. (Burroughs plus Sperry became UniSys rather than Spurroughs.)

I suppose 30 years is long enough for the reinvention to be seen as something brand new and unique and patentable. However, in a real world I suspect this prior art, documented on Wikipedia (the model number to look for is Burroughs B25) should not be patentable by any stretch of the imagination.

{^_^}

Re:Gee, memories are short these days

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say just about every combination has been tried now; podules and modules connected by radio waves, daisy-chaining, connector/slots, fibre-optic. The idea of buying new modules when needed seems a good idea, but by the time comes to update the GPU, you'll probably want to update the CPU, memory, storage as the same time.

prior art

[Anonymous Coward]

How the f* can they get a patent on things others have done before?

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Project-Christine-Razer-zeigt-Konzept-fuer-modularen-PC-2081310.html

Google Phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds awfully similar to how google wanted to build that modular phone (aka mini pc.)

More Prior Art

[ytene]

http://www.pcworld.com/article... Didn't Acer have this last year? According to web articles covering the Acer piece, Microsoft filed for a patent at almost the same time that Acer went public with actual product [or, at least, prototypes]. There simply isn't enough innovation in Microsoft's claim to warrant a patent.

Not practical

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft can argue this is more practical. But the costs of multiple components and the complexity of that type of design is kinda dumb. I just bought a Chromebox to replace a aging Desktop PC. These small box type systems seems functional and you can get them with up to a core i7. Although not sure why you would want or need a core i7 for Chrome OS? I think stacking has been tried with Mac Mini form as many have created external drives to look and function to the Mini and fit this stacking ideal. I still think most interested in a ability to stack would still gravitate towards a bigger box system that could easily get hardware upgrades.

Seen it before 30y ago

[Anonymous Coward]

HP 9000 series 300 had something like this.

Nothing new, just reinventing the wheel again as usual

Project Christine

[gizmod]

Razer did something similar, it is called Project Christine.

Re:Project Christine

[Anonymous Coward]

Hope it doesn't turn out like The Car of the same name.

Acer Revo Build

[CanadianMacFan]

http://www.acer.com/ac/en/CA/c...

So Microsoft has added a monitor to the design.

Re:Acer Revo Build

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless MS has a filing date before this became available to the public. Then acer either has a license or a lawsuit. Although there is plenty of other prior art that would make this obvious to a skilled practitioner.

Miss Opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Replace "but with magnets" with "but with lasers" .... much better and oh so unique.

Re:Colossal Failure - Amen

[Anonymous Coward]

Having worked in the corporate sector for ahem "a while", the last thing you want is a custom configuration for everyone, especially one that it is easy for anyone to 'get a module and plug in" on their own. Economies of scale, support, upgrade schedules, regression testing and standardized software are all a problem now. Making it easier for people who have trouble telling the difference between Ethernet and USB cables to make changes on their own will make things even better for the support folks. Sort of an "extra charge rich environment"

the system buses are not setup for this. TB poor

[Joe_Dragon]

the system buses are not setup for this. TB is a poor choice as well (only pci-e 4x max and video data eats up some that bandwidth also may force on board video as well)

Needs pci-e links (to bad that sky-lake is limited there and the low end ($384.99) LGA 2011-v3 socket cpus don't even have the full set of pci-e lanes needing people to move up to a ($579.99) cpu.

Ram needs to be in the base box only.

35 years of prior art

[gonar]

prior art: IBM PC Jr sidecars, Be, PC104 (and derivatives and precusrors), all the old apple peripherals that were designed to be stacked on/under Mac SE

My thought too

[mpercy]

Sounds like a rip-off of PC-104, i.e. they are a few decades late.

PC104 has been doing this for decades.

Prior Art

[BigFootApe]

Network switches with stackable backplanes have been around forever.

too bad stacking will kill performance

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a good reason the components are directly hooked into the motherboard the way they are. Any increase in distance will increase latency (the time it takes for data to move between components.) Adding in interfaces where you have to jump between stacks will increase the latency beyond reasonable amounts. Fine for low end computing but anything higher end will see bottlenecks and lag will be pretty horrible I imagine.

Forgetting the past

[sdinfoserv]

Again, nothing new here - IBM PC JR anyone?

Now this is freedom

[newbie_fantod]

will enable people to put together the exact PC components they want

...providing that their PC runs Windows 10+

Here we go again

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not patent-worthy.

This is not some new and novel concept. I've seen and used such devices in the late 1970's. I still have one or two of them lying around somewhere, still running.

Apparently prior art doesn't count any more. But there is so much prior art, it could take a full five years to do the required research to find something.

And lawyers are lazy.

Re:So many questions, no answers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't be. "Dick Cheney" doesn't have an 'O', or a heart for that matter.

Someone Else holds the patent

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe Atari has them beat with the Atari 800 Home Computer. Slotted modules for whatever fits inside, and SIO for whatever lives outside the box. Hey Microsoft, thanks for playing!

Re:Someone Else holds the patent

[Agripa]

The Atari 800 only used the modules for memory expansion. The Texas Instruments TI-99/4A daisy chained peripherals onto an expansion bus so it is a much closer match.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:So many questions, no answers...

[AK Marc]

Why was Justice Scalia declared dead by the justice of the peace without seeing the body?

Because of the official reports listing him as dead listed him as dead, and there was no confusion on that matter. The JP just decides whether there needs to be a larger inquest. An old fat man dies of a heart problem. Move on.

Why was there no autopsy performed?

Because they are expensive, and there was no signs of any cause other than a heart problem in an old fat man.

Why wasn't the Marshal's service along as a security detail this particular weekend?

Because Scalia declined that. Did he kill himself, and was in on the conspiracy?

Why does the owner of the ranch refuse to disclose who the other guests were?

Because if he did, he'd never get another guest. Money over the truth or openness. Isn't that the American Way?

Most intriguing...does the answer to all these questions begin with the letter "O"?

So Obama flew to Texas and executed Scalia himself? If this was a conspiracy all the way to the top, why not just have Obama walk into a Supreme Court session and shoot Scalia in the face? He can then nominate a replacement, then pardon himself, and wait for the impeachment (or resign), but would never be prosecuted for the crime.

Re: So many questions, no answers...

[fyngyrz]

Hah. Moderating fact as flamebait. Hilarious.