WhyJini Now?
`
`Sunmicrosystems
`
`Sun Microsystems, Inc.
`2550 Garcia Avenue
`Mountain View, CA 94043 USA
`415 960-1300
`fax 415 969-9131
`
`Revision 01, August 1998
`
`LGEExhibit-1012/Page 1 of 16
`LGEv. Uniloc
`
`

`

`© 1998 Sun Microsystems,Inc.
`901 San Antonio Road,Palo Alto, CA 94303 U.S.A.
`All rights reserved. Copyright in this documentis owned by Sun Microsystems,Inc.
`
`Sun Microsystems, Inc. (SUN) hereby grants to you at no charge a nonexclusive, nontrans-
`ferable, worldwide, limited license (without the right to sublicense) under SUN's intellec-
`tual property rights that are essential to use this Specification for internal evaluation
`purposes only. Other than this limited license, you acquire noright, title, or interest in or to
`the Specification and you shall have no right to use the Specification for productive or com-
`mercial use.
`
`RESTRICTED RIGHTS LEGEND
`Use, duplication, or disclosure by the U.S. Government is subject to restrictions of FAR
`52.227-14(g) (2) (6/87) and FAR 52.227-19(6/87), or DFAR 252.227-7015(b)(6/95) and DFAR
`227.7202-1(a).
`
`This software and documentation is the proprietary information of Sun Microsystems, Inc.
`You shall use it only in accordance with the terms ofthe license agreement you entered into
`with Sun.
`
`SUN MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES ABOUT THE SUITABILITY OF
`THE SOFTWARE, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
`THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
`PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. SUN SHALL NOTBE LIABLE FOR ANY DAM-
`AGES SUFFERED BY LICENSEE AS A RESULT OF USING, MODIFYING OR DISTRIBUT-
`ING THIS SOFTWARE ORITS DERIVATIVES.
`TRADEMARKS
`
`Sun, the Sun logo, Sun Microsystems, JavaSoft, JavaBeans, JDK, Java, HotJava, HotJava
`Views, Visual Java, Solaris, NEO, Joe, Netra, NFS, ONC, ONC+, OpenWindows, PC-NFS,
`EmbeddedJava, PersonalJava, SNM, SunNet Manager, Solaris sunburst design, Solstice,
`SunCore, SolarNet, SunWeb, Sun Workstation, The Network Is The Computer, ToolTalk,
`Ultra, Ultracomputing, Ultraserver, Where The Network Is Going, Sun WorkShop, XView,
`Java WorkShop,the Java Coffee Cup logo, and Visual Java are trademarks or registered
`trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
`
`THIS PUBLICATIONIS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
`EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
`WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR
`NON-INFRINGEMENT. THIS PUBLICATION COULD INCLUDE TECHNICAL INAC-
`CURACIES OR TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS.
`CHANGES ARE PERIODICALLY
`ADDED TO THE INFORMATION HEREIN; THESE CHANGES WILL BE INCORPO-
`RATED IN NEW EDITIONS OF THE PUBLICATION. SUN MICROSYSTEMS, INC. MAY
`MAKE IMPROVEMENTS AND/OR CHANGES IN THE PRODUCT(S) AND/OR THE
`PROGRAM(S) DESCRIBED IN THIS PUBLICATION AT ANY TIME.
`
`BOPlease
`
`Recycle
`
`Ca
`
`Adobe PostScript
`
`LGE Exhibit-1012/Page 2 of 16
`
`

`

`Why Jini Now?
`
`We’ve all seen the picture: A computer room circa 1963 with its raised floor, a dozen
`tall skinny boxes representing the mainframe, a Teletype terminal, a bulky line
`printer or two, and the pièce de résistance—a cleancut gentleman loading a mag
`tape onto one of the 3 or 4 tape drives. He looks out of the picture toward you,
`smiling.
`
`The picture seems quaint to us now—how unlike contemporary computing.
`
`But in the intervening 35 years, what has changed in the picture? Not much—just
`the scale. The speed of computation has increased by a perhaps factor of 3000, the
`size of feasible computations has also increased dramatically by a factor of perhaps
`1000, and the size of the computer has decreased dramatically: The contemporary
`computer—the one that’s 1000–3000 times more powerful than the one in the
`picture—sits on a desk and is used routinely in the office and at home. But a block
`diagram of the major components, their roles, and how they work together hasn’t
`changed at all. We’ve merely shrunk the computer and sped it up, but we haven’t
`advanced it as a tool. This is significant.
`
`Other significant things have changed as well—the smiling cleancut gentleman has
`disappeared, sort of. That man was the system administrator (sys admin) who was
`responsible for making sure that the gargantuan computer worked properly, that
`programs it needed to operate were kept up to date and in good working order, and
`that the programs you wanted to run were loaded and executed as you specified.
`The problem is that he hasn’t disappeared entirely: If you work in a small office,
`have a home office or a moderately sophisticated home computer system, or if you
`work in a department with limited resources, most of his duties have fallen on your
`shoulders. You make sure the computer is working properly; you keep the programs
`you use loaded and up to date; and you make sure that all the components are in
`working order, and communicating properly with each other. In larger
`organizations, the smiling man is still called a sys admin, but his job (or her job) is to
`install your computer when it first arrives and to fix it or arrange to have it fixed
`when it breaks down—and you share him or her with 20 or more other people.
`
`The technology disclosed herein may be covered by patents or patents pending
`
`1
`
`LGE Exhibit-1012/Page 3 of 16
`
`

`

`What else has changed? Computers have become ubiquitous, and they have
`disappeared. They’ve disappeared by donning coats of automobile hide, telephone
`skin, stereo fur, and microwave scales. Quite a few of the things we use have a
`computer in it, and all of these computers are easy to use, while the only thing we
`think of as a computer is hardest to use of all. There is nothing magical or
`paradoxical about this: Throughout history the best technology has always sunk
`below our view within tools and toys that do something we need or something we
`want.
`
`By disappearing they dominate our lives. But also their ubiquity is quite visible on
`the Internet and the Web. With Web browsers we visit computers all over the
`world—sometimes in peoples’ dens and bedrooms, sometimes in corporate halls the
`other side of sunset. When we work the Web, aren’t we operating under the model
`that there is exactly one computer in the world?
`
`And when we connect to a site with wonderful animated graphics, we’ve actually
`installed and successfully run a program that a Swede or an Aussie but someone far
`away has put together in her or his spare time. It’s a simple piece of code written in
`Java, but what we’ve done was once considered remarkable. And even today, the
`simplest program we can buy from the best professional software developer can take
`many minutes or hours of devoted attention to install and run.
`
`These three facts (you are the new sys admin, computers are nowhere, the one
`computer is everywhere) should combine to improve the world of using computers
`as computers— by making the boundaries of computers disappear, by making the
`computer be everywhere, and by making the details of working with the computer
`as simple as plugging a DVD machine into your stereo system.
`
`What is Jini?
`
`Jini is a new system architecture that tries to make the improvements these
`observations suggest: Jini brings to the network the facilities of distributed
`computing, network-based services, seamless expansion, reliable smart devices, and
`ease of administration.
`
`Here’s the Jini vision: When you walk up to an interaction device that is part of a Jini
`system, all of the services on the Jini system are as available to you as if they were on
`your own computer—and services include not only software but hardware devices
`as well, including disk drives, DVD players, VCRs, printers, scanners, digital
`cameras, and almost anything else you could imagine that passes “information”
`(digital streams) in and out. Adding a new device to a Jini system is simply plugging
`it in.
`
`2 Why Jini Now? • August 1998
`The technology disclosed herein may be covered by patents or patents pending
`
`LGE Exhibit-1012/Page 4 of 16
`
`

`

`We use the term system for a couple of reasons. First, we say Jini is a system because
`Jini really isn’t a computer nor is it a network of computers. Not only does it accept
`other sorts of devices (entertainment devices, MIDI devices, etc.) than we normally
`expect on a computer or computer network, but there is no single computer that is
`the computer. The system appears as a set of services that are available—some are
`software implemented and others hardware, but the interfaces (user and
`programmatic) always presents simply and uniformly the services available
`regardless of how they are implemented or where they are.
`
`The second reason we say Jini is a system is because Jini itself is not simply a set of
`point technologies but a new architecture for computing, sort of like a new block
`diagram for what a computer could be.
`
`And we use the term service because there is nothing inherently interesting about
`computers to people who want to use them, just as there is nothing inherently
`interesting about stereo components except what they do, what services they
`provide. A CD player, an amplifier, some speakers, and a CD make music—that’s all
`we care about once it’s all working. What most people care about from their
`computing systems is what they can do with them: read and compose e-mail,
`prepare papers and presentations, do financial work, find information on the Web,
`or be entertained. Each of these things is a service, and we care about them, not
`about the types of CPUs, the number of registers, the speeds of the buses, or the
`word size.
`
`In other words, Jini is a system architecture (hardware, software, and network) that
`supports the notion that a computing environment is a network-connected set of
`computing, storage, display, entertainment, and IO devices. In Jini, devices can be
`added or subtracted, and doing so may alter some of the capabilities of the system,
`but it will not alter its identity or basic usability.
`
`Putting together Jini requires a few things:
`n an infrastructure which operates as a dynamically distributed system
`n a common language and implementation that enables low-overhead
`communication between distributed objects
`n a lookup service (which identifies objects that supply those services)
`n add-in and subtract-out protocols which are implemented on each device—we
`call this the discovery protocol
`
`Jini Software Details
`The first realization of Jini ties together machines on which Java objects are running,
`perhaps in different virtual machines. Jini enables such objects to work together as
`though they were on a single, very powerful computer. Jini enables such objects to
`
`Why Jini Now?
`The technology disclosed herein may be covered by patents or patents pending
`
`3
`
`LGE Exhibit-1012/Page 5 of 16
`
`

`

`be activated and tracked, to communicate with each other, and generally to be
`managed. Jini provides a user with access to all of the facilities on the collection of
`networked machines in a location-transparent fashion.
`
`Jini Environment
`
`Jini works in a networked environment, and we assume the following hardware
`trends will continue:
`n processors will continue to get faster, smaller, and cheaper. This trend will
`continue and permit us to assume that a powerful microprocessor will be
`available in even the simplest device.
`n memory will continue to get faster, larger, and cheaper. This trend will allow
`reasonable memory to accompany the powerful processors mentioned above.
`n network bandwidth will continue to expand. In particular, Jini assumes that
`networks of between 100 megabits per second and 1 gigabit per second will be
`common soon.
`n storage devices will continue to increase in capacity per unit cost.
`n entertainment devices will continue to increase their “digital component” so that
`Jini systems will increasingly blur the distinction between consumer electronics,
`computers, networks, the Web, and entertainment devices.
`
`In designing Jini, we have assumed the following about trends in the software
`environment:
`n Java will be a major implementation language, but will not be the only
`implementation language in use for either new or maintained (legacy) code
`n legacy applications— written in a variety of languages and requiring a variety of
`underlying operating systems—will still be important
`n the Web will increase in importance for application and entertainment
`development (and not just the existing Web, but the Web and Web browsers as a
`paradigm for human-computer-entertainment interaction)
`
`Jini Functionality
`
`Jini provides resources in which to run Java objects, communication facilities
`between those objects, and the ability to find and exploit resources on the network.
`
`Jini uses separate Java virtual machines to run Java objects. Running objects in
`separate virtual machines has two major benefits:
`n objects have a degree of isolation not possible within a particular virtual machine
`n objects can have different access controls and resource allocation
`
`4 Why Jini Now? • August 1998
`The technology disclosed herein may be covered by patents or patents pending
`
`LGE Exhibit-1012/Page 6 of 16
`
`

`

`Jini provides a communication layer between objects in the various virtual machines
`that enables those objects to work together. Using an enhanced version of the Java
`Remote Method Invocation system (RMI), Jini enables method invocations to take
`place across virtual machine and physical machine boundaries. RMI enhancements
`enable activation of objects being called and the use of multicast to contact replicated
`objects, providing high availability and high reliance objects to be easily
`implemented in the Jini framework.
`
`Jini uses lookup service allowing resources connected by the communication
`infrastructure to be found.
`
`Jini provides a mechanism for other Jini-enabled devices (such as disk drives,
`printers, and computers) to join into the overall Jini system. When a device joins a
`Jini system, its services are added to the lookup service. Symmetrically, when a Jini-
`enabled device leaves a Jini system (by being removed or by becoming unreliable),
`its services are deleted from the lookup service. The mechanism fpr joining is called
`discovery.
`
`Jini Benefits
`
`By providing a well-established distributed computing platform which takes
`advantage Java virtual machines running on a variety of platforms, users will see
`performance and reliability gains from applications designed to use Jini. Resources
`already provided in the Java language will see performance and reliability gains by
`being activated on unencumbered machines where possible.
`
`Jini provides the possibility to compose systems to meet specific requirements rather
`than relying on a general-purpose system. Particular service requirements for a task
`or a group can be put together because Jini provides a low-impact way of
`customizing not only your software but your hardware configuration. The services
`view of work enables devices and software to be managed uniformly.
`
`Equally important, though, is that managing resources available on a Jini system is
`much simpler: Each Jini-enabled device has enough information stored on it to
`enable hot-plugging capabilities. By simply plugging in a device, all of its Jini-
`related resources become available without intervention. Each device contains a user
`interface for configuring and customizing the device.
`
`This implies that the total cost of ownership of a computer system will decline as
`fewer system administrators are needed. To be sure, in the short term a system
`administrator will still be required for even a medium-sized network, but the tasks
`that he or she will be performing will be those associated with the enterprise in
`which the network is involved, not routine resource maintenance. Further, systems
`for small business or departments and home use can be administered more reliably
`and at a much lower cost with Jini.
`
`Why Jini Now?
`The technology disclosed herein may be covered by patents or patents pending
`
`5
`
`LGE Exhibit-1012/Page 7 of 16
`
`

`

`Finally, Jini begins to bring together the realms of computing and home networks
`including entertainment and personal/family management. Jini devices can include
`not only computers, printers, scanners, and disks, but VCRs, DVD players, CD
`players, MIDI devices, the Web, and even broadcast receivers. As long as a device
`can attach to the network and can appear as a Java object, it can be a Jini device.
`
`Changing Trends
`Jini is based on a number of already-existing technologies, and so it represents a
`small technological step but a large intellectual one. Video recorders were once
`considered useful only to television studios and filmmakers. But, in the 1970s people
`found that VCRs provided a way to alter how they used TVs, how they interacted
`with their families, and how they entertained themselves. For better or worse, the
`modern world will never be the same. What started out as a specialized, exotic
`device turned into one of the most common pieces of home technology. Similarly,
`computers and networks, until now the domain of specialists and professionals, can
`make the leap into the world of ordinary life where they can finally make the
`difference so many in the past have imagined.
`
`In this relatively technical section we will look at the technologies that are
`converging to make Jini possible.
`
`Network Models
`
`From their first appearance in the 1950s until today, computers have been expanding
`in connectivity. From the 1950s until the early 1970s there were almost exclusively
`isolated mainframes; from the early 1970s until the early to mid-1980s there were
`additionally minicomputers sometimes connected by proprietary networks or the
`ARPANET; from the early 1980s until the later 1980s and early 1990s there were
`additionally workstation servers and PC clients connected by LANs; from the early
`1990s until now there were workstation servers and thin clients connected by LANs,
`WANs, and the Internet; and right now we are seeing the concept of servers and
`clients disappearing and the network actually becoming the computer.
`
`Each of these transitions has been fueled by a couple of forces: price, control, data
`transfer speed, and the role of the network.
`
`Mainframe (cid:213) Minicomputer
`
`For many years the mainframe was the center of business computing: Payroll,
`record-keeping, inventory, and accounting were all handled by a large central
`computer.
`
`6 Why Jini Now? • August 1998
`The technology disclosed herein may be covered by patents or patents pending
`
`LGE Exhibit-1012/Page 8 of 16
`
`

`

`Control of the mainframe was in the hands of a centralized computing agency—the
`MIS department—which did all the backups, custom programming, upgrades, etc.
`The price of the machines was very high, which implied they were used for
`“important”, noninteractive tasks.
`
`In the late 1960s and early 1970s several manufacturers produced what were termed
`“minicomputers”. The minicomputer’s main effect was to bring computing into
`departments and divisions, where it was once confined to corporate headquarters.
`
`The mini was physically a bit smaller than the mainframes, considerably less
`expensive, and had interactive capabilities. Corporate data at that time resided
`partially in the mainframe and partially in the mini, and approximately 20% of the
`backup and maintenance load moved into the departments. Maintenance of the
`computers was still performed centrally. The total cost of ownership was still high
`and perhaps a bit higher than for the pure mainframe world.
`
`The most dramatic effect, though, was to begin the computerization of industry by
`making computers available at the departmental level with interactive computer
`terminals and some communication software. E-mail and electronic memos began to
`change the culture of the workplace to one where the “virtual” workplace began to
`emerge.
`
`Of significance was the battle that began between the central MIS groups and the
`departments and individuals that would play out over the next several decades.
`Early MIS groups enjoyed a monopoly on computing within a company. The mini
`was the first opportunity for the departments to challenge what they saw as the
`tyranny of the MIS group. Forward-looking departments saw benefits of computing
`in their own areas of responsibility outside the administrative role the computer
`played in the entire enterprise. With the minicomputer departments began to hire
`their own programming staff to do customized programming and some
`maintenance.
`
`A significant change that pushed this transition was that many people in the
`departments had a computer background from their high school and college
`educations, and the new entrepreneurial spirit of the 1980s meant that department
`heads more often treated their departments as small business, exercising more and
`more autonomy.
`
`Mini (cid:213) PC/Server
`
`In the mid- to late 1980s, several trends came together to weave a change in
`corporate computing. The first was the ascendance of the personal computer. This
`took place because the personal computer began to have enough productivity
`software that departments put one on every desk. Productivity software includes
`word processing, e-mail, document preparation, accounting, project management,
`and simple database packages. The trend was accelerated by the appearance of
`LANs.
`
`Why Jini Now?
`The technology disclosed herein may be covered by patents or patents pending
`
`7
`
`LGE Exhibit-1012/Page 9 of 16
`
`

`

`The other trend was the reduction of size of what was effectively next evolution of
`the minicomputer: the workstation. The power of the workstation increased to
`where it largely replaced the minicomputer, and the purchase price of the
`workstation approached the PC. Many departments had both workstations and
`informal computer support groups, and some had their own MIS groups to do
`custom programming and support.
`
`Workstations ran on the same network as the PC’s and had enough horsepower that
`the dream of the departments could begin to be realized: department-level
`computing where the business of the department could be codified.
`
`The price of PC’s dropped enough that, by the early 1990s, individuals were buying
`their own PC’s for working at home. At first this was supported by transferring files
`with floppy disks, but advanced to modem-based connectivity once the problems of
`high-speed data transfer over analog phone lines were handled.
`
`Notice that the source of processing power had shifted for the first time from a
`centralized CPU center to local machines. All the important productivity software
`came off the shelf and ran very well on the PCs.
`
`Data transfer speed increased from something close to 56 kilobits per second in the
`early 1980s for custom or proprietary connections to as much as 10 megabits per
`second in the early 1990s so that cross-mounted file systems could provide a way to
`informally share information within and between departments.
`
`The MIS groups hit their low during this transition, because almost every one of
`their responsibilities had been taken over by departments and individuals while
`they were still held accountable for integration failures.
`
`PC/Server (cid:213) Thin Client
`
`The most dramatic change in the computing industry was the switch to the Web
`from the PC/server style of computing. In the late 1980s, the first implementation of
`the World Wide Web appeared. From then until Netscape popularized the Web, there
`had been slow but steady growth in the use of the Web and in the number of Web
`sites. When browsers became commonplace, businesses that had invested in three-
`tier and client-server applications realized that the browser could be viewed as a
`very thin client and the Web server as the server in an application. Java as a
`mechanism to create usable user interfaces within any browser and CGI scripting on
`the server side completed the picture.
`
`The possibility of thin clients means that the cost of being connected into a business
`is very low if requirements are only modest. That is, any computer that can run a
`Web browser can be used to conduct business and exchange e-mail and documents.
`
`Of importance is the fact that the thinner the client, the more the focus of computing
`returns to a centralized place, though that place is likely to be a department and not
`the enterprise. On the other hand, with the speed of data transfer and the existence
`
`8 Why Jini Now? • August 1998
`The technology disclosed herein may be covered by patents or patents pending
`
`LGE Exhibit-1012/Page 10 of 16
`
`

`

`of so-called legacy connections, the client is increasingly represented by a Web
`browser, the server by a workstation, and the data by a mainframe-supported
`database.
`
`The cost of ownership decreases because the client is not required to run very many
`programs, and the cost then depends on how many clients are connected to a server
`and therefore how powerful the server must be or how many servers are required.
`Nevertheless, because the client is still a PC, its horsepower is overabundant, and so
`there is waste, causing pressure for a less expensive solution.
`
`This form of computing requires Internet and Intranet connections to be fast and
`reliable, putting pressure on the servers and infrastructure overall.
`
`Early thin-client systems were simple forms-based HTML interfaces. Soon after the
`Web began to take off, Java was introduced as a way to write small applications that
`would run on the client machine after being downloaded to a browser. Today this
`means that the client machine cannot be trivially simple and poorly powered (as a
`computational engine), but neither does it need to support general-purpose
`computing in quite the same way: virtual memory and hence fast disks are probably
`not necessary, nor is a large amount of disk storage.
`
`Fixed Control (cid:213) Programmable Control
`
`There is one last trend that fits into the picture of why Jini makes sense today. It is
`represented by the change from fixed-control devices to programmable control
`devices. This trend started with musical instruments—both performance and
`composition—and is moving on to consumer electronics devices.
`
`Until the 1970s, musicians played their instruments and got whatever sounds they
`could out of them based on their talents and virtuosity. Sometimes a small device
`would come on the market that would either alter the sound of an instrument or
`provide an existing “user interface” to take on a variety of sounds. Later there were
`“stomp boxes” which were used by electric guitar players who plugged the output
`of their guitars into a box and the output of the box went to either another box or the
`amplifier. The box would have an on/off switch activated by a footswitch sitting on
`top of the box which was placed on the floor, and hence the name “stomp box.”
`
`At the same time—in the 1960s—the first modern synthesizers were developed.
`These were keyboard instruments where pressing a key would activate a tone
`generator whose waveform could be altered by filters and envelope generators to
`provide unique and, at the time, unusual sounds. Musicians would “program” the
`synthesizer to play a particular sound or set of sounds depending on which keys
`were played by altering a set of plugs or patches.
`
`Why Jini Now?
`The technology disclosed herein may be covered by patents or patents pending
`
`9
`
`LGE Exhibit-1012/Page 11 of 16
`
`

`

`What followed was MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface). MIDI provided an
`interface specification that synthesizers and other musical instruments could
`implement that enabled control signals to be sent to the instruments. This enabled
`computers to be hooked up to musical instruments, and real programming was
`possible.
`
`By the 1980s, stereo equipment manufacturers were producing their own version of
`stomp boxes—components that would plug into each other: turntables, CD players,
`preamplifiers, amplifiers,equalization boxes, noise-reduction units, speakers, tuners,
`tape recorders and tape players. There were even switch boxes that would enable
`you to switch from sending signals to speakers in the living room to sending signals
`to speakers on the patio.
`
`Similarly, VCRs and TVs were manufactured that could accept several input sources.
`By switching the inputs, it was possible to play a tape in the living-room VCR and
`watch it on the bedroom TV.
`
`The connection is easy to make: Consumer electronics is nothing more than
`components or boxes that pass signals in and out and which can be connected
`together differently for different purposes. MIDI is a standard way of passing
`control information to components or boxes that pass signals in and out and which
`can be connected together differently for different purposes.
`
`In fact, this is what the IEEE 1394 standard for consumer electronics is: an
`interconnect mechanism and an interface to enable consumer electronics devices
`(including MIDI) to be dynamically hooked up under computer control.
`
`MIDI-controlled devices represent the blending of devices that perform a useful
`function with digital control that directs digital or analog information passing. When
`we look to bring this idea to the systems world, we get Jini.
`
`Thin Client (cid:213) Network Is the Computer
`
`If we look at the hardware trends described above, we see a couple of things:
`n computing (CPU) power is getting strong enough that almost any general
`purpose CPU chip can perform the calculations needed for business computing
`n disks are getting very small, very fast, and very inexpensive.
`n RAM is finally getting inexpensive
`n the network is getting faster and more reliable
`n displays are getting a little better
`
`The implications of these trends is interesting: The computations that the hardware
`can perform are vastly larger and more complex than before. Numerical
`computation has gone through the roof. Simulations, graphics, reasoning—all of
`these are several orders of magnitude better than they were just a few decades ago.
`These gains are important, but they are more important to the professional
`
`10 Why Jini Now? • August 1998
`The technology disclosed herein may be covered by patents or patents pending
`
`LGE Exhibit-1012/Page 12 of 16
`
`

`

`programmer or professional user than to the majority of people using computers for
`ordinary productivity reasons—these are the largely hidden gains of the industry
`and field of computer science. These gains are seen by looking at CPU performance,
`RAM size, and disk size.
`
`In the days of mainframes and minicomputers, each company or department shared
`a single computer with a single space of applications that could be run, data that
`could be shared, and, in most cases, a community of workers and colleagues. There
`was no question about whether you could run a program your colleague could or
`whether data formats were compatible.
`
`In the days of workstations and personal computers, people gained the luxury of
`guaranteed access to reliable computation. Although this opened up new
`possibilities for how to work, it also served to isolate people and resources into small
`islands that might communicate only in a rudimentary way. The gains were still
`important: If each user had his or her own computer, other users cannot impose a
`heavy load on a shared computational resource, and individuals could upgrade their
`own computers with smaller cost than in a centralized context.
`
`In the 1980s we connected computers via networks and began using graphical user
`interfaces. In functionality, convenience, and power, this opened up a world of
`possibilities so that people could work and act in ways only imagined before. In
`particular, the two apparently diverging advantages of a common workspace and
`guaranteed, incrementally upgradeable resources could converge. No longer would
`it matter what you, your department, or even your company had purchased for
`computer equipment, you could find information and interact and in some cases use
`devices in the next office, down the hall, in the branch office, or on the other side of
`the globe. With a network, connecting new devices can be simple—you would no
`longer need to open up a cabinet or a closed box, you could simply plug it in. With
`the Web, the whole face of applications and interaction changed.
`
`But in the intervening 15 or so years since the early 1980s, the network and display
`technology advanced hardly at all compared to advances in the other hardware
`areas, and the dream of reuniting separated computers into a shared workplace
`never materialized. The experiences of typical end-users has not got much better
`than they were in the days of isolated workstations and personal computers, except
`insofar as applications take advantage of the increased compute horsepower.
`
`In fact, in many cases connecting computers together in networks today has
`decreased their reliability and sometimes their performance as well, precisely
`