True Plug-n-Play Concept

[fenix at theopencd.net]

True Plug-n-Play
=================
Plug-n-Play 2: (or True Plug-n-Play)
Concept: Driver must reside inside the hardware on ROM chip.

Here in my article, I'm going to describe a new concept that is going to 
replace
today's plug-n-play efforts; also called "plug-n-pray" sometimes, when things 
don't work as expected.

The problem:
============
Today, to get an Operating System to support all the newest hardware millions 
of dollars are spent,
but the situation was totally different a decade ago. 

Let me explain:
In early 1990's all the hardware was supported throught standard IBM 
compatible BIOS commands,
so a new Operating System (DOS) needed to support only a few (hundreds) BIOS 
commands, and
a CPU instructions.

That was because all the PC's "stone-age" were standartized this way; ranging 
from PC speakers,
to memory, to CPU, to hard disk calls, to keyboard, and to video BIOS commands.

None of that requires drivers as of today; which is good, but we are now in 
a "more advanced age"
and we have new devices, like: Multi-media keyboards, wireless 8-button USB 
mouses, USB cameras,
advanced AGP 3D video-accelerators, soft-modems, surround sound cards, and... 
even virtual reality suits.

All of that required ports, memory addresses, IRQs, and other resources, and 
the Plug-n-play
concept was developed.
 The plug-n-play concept solved the incompatibilities, by automatically 
assigning 
 the right resources (IRQ for example) to non standratized equipment of 
the "stone-age" like the sound card. 
(I mean, there are no BIOS standards to get access to the sound hardware, 
unlike video)

Today's Plug-n-Play standard allows you to recognize a device after insertion, 
 but it's NOT guarnteed that it will work on your OS. 

  But the drivers are still a problem, it's an achilles heel of today's PCs 
architecture, which
must be addressed by the True Plug-n-Play concept.

Today Microsoft guys have invested hundreds millions of dollars to make sure 
that this stuff 
works by creating a huge driver set and integrating this set in Windows OS, 
which grows the OS huge,
but still it works far from good, and does not guarntee that anything will 
work.

Example of Plug-n-Play today
============================

Windows XP partially solves this problem with two ways:
1) It has powerful Hardware Emulation Layer.
 (which allows for unknown video cards to work in high-resolution for example; 
which is very good XP feature)
2) It has a lot of drivers included. (Integrated in XP)

Because of this, WindowsXP supports many devices "out-of-the-box",
but that support bad.
For example:
You have nVidia GeForce 3.
With PnP, WinXP will detect it, and because of it's extremely large
driver set, it will find the appropriate driver and use it right?
- Yes. But Microsoft's driver for GeForce3 totally lacks OpenGL
acceleration, as well as all proprietary features seen in an nVidia driver.

With "True plug-n-play", the OS, should get the right driver right from the 
ROM.
Of course it won't be the newest, unlike from www.nvidia.com,
but it will be WAY better than Microsoft's XP integrated driver.
Also it's guaranteed to work on all OSes.
Of course the DirectX portion of the driver won't work on Linux... but that's 
another story.
Optionally, it should be multilingual.

But there are rare hardware that works only in Win98 and not in WinXP, and not 
in Linux,
and I want to solve the problem from happeing in the future.

Also, I'm a lazy person, and some people even call me as a Microsoftism 
follower for that, and
I would like to install ONLY the OS, no drivers CDs afterwards.

 The Solution
==============
Concept: Driver must reside inside the hardware on ROM chip.

As the concept points out, There must be an abstract driver to reside in EVERY
piece of hardware, in all PCI and PCI-Express cards, and in all USB devices 
(cameras, mice,..) as well on a chip called "driver ROM".

After you install a new device, or a new OS for that matter, that "driver ROM" 
chip should be
automatically detected, and the cross-platform driver will be downloaded for 
that particular device.

The "driver ROM" chip should contain the abstract, cross-platform driver, 
that should work under both 32/64-bit BSD/Linux/Windows future operating 
systems.

Of course in order to make this cross-platform combo possible a special API 
has to be developed,
but with a user's demand everything is possible...

To make such a switch it will require new hardware and Operating Systems 
generation,
and the hardware is going to cost a few bugs more because of the software,
but it will be a pure win for users, who will forget what a hardware driver 
problem is,
like we forgotten how terrible it was to configure a sound-card in DOS on a 
per-game basis.

"True plug-n-play" concept will revolution the PC driver architecture.

We must agree on some kind of cross-platform Open standard
That "driver ROM" must contain an abstract driver 

Device will run on Linux, Windows, whatever OS after just being plugged-in...
On older operating systems (like older Linuxes, or Windowses),
  such new hardware will work throught drivers installed from a CD. (like 
today)

It order for this standard to succeed I need the main industry players to 
accept it,
or more specifically I need:

1. -Microsoft
2. -Intel
3. -nVidia
4. -ATI
5. -Red Hat
6. -HP
7. -VIA
8. -SiS
9. -IBM
10.-Realtek

Since I see this as a concept for future standard, I call for all 
the "opponents" to participate.

=======================================================

Bottom Line benefits:

For hardware vendors it will be easier to sell hardware,

for Microsoft and RedHat it will be easier to setup and use their operating 
systems.

Also for Microsoft, it will render their project of driver integration into XP 
useless,
saving to them hundreds of millions of dollars.

And the biggest benefit is for us, the lazy users ! 
>From now on, we won't need to lurk on the internet and look for drivers for my 
new OS.

Idea made by Alexey Eremenko on 12.2.2004.
Rewritten by Alexey Eremenko on 18.5.2004.

About me:
My name is Alexey Eremenko, from Netanya, Israel, 19 years old, 
have successfully passed a Cisco Certified Network Associate exams, and I have 
1
year of experiece inside Cisco Systems, and 10 years of experience on PCs,
I like Open Source Software and WindowsXP at the same time, and I would like
to contribute a few ideas from my brain at a good will.

Alexey Eremenko Aka Fenix*NBK* - fenix at theopencd.net -or- telephone: 972-09-
8329765

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