USB-Based NIC Torrents While Your PC Sleeps

jangel sends us to WindowsForDevices.com for news on a prototype device created by researchers from Microsoft and UC San Diego. It's a USB-based NIC that includes its own ARM processor and flash storage, and can download files or torrent while a host PC is sleeping. As a result, its inventors say, the "Somniloquy" device slashes power usage by up to 50x. The device requires a few tweaks on the host OS side save state before sleeping. The prototype works with a Vista host but the hardware comprising the NIC is based on a Linux stack. Here is the research paper (PDF).

50x less?

[Enry]

Argh!

It's one of the following:

1/50 the power usage

or

a standard PC uses 50x the power of this NIC

KillerNIC?

[bstreiff]

Isn't this somewhat akin to what the much-hyped KillerNIC [slashdot.org] was all about-- a separate device to offload network activity (for example, BitTorrent downloads)?

Re:Perfect for the computer lab

[Anonymous Coward]

If it had Wifi, you could just stick it to the bottom of a table at your favorite coffee shop.

RTFA

Pulled directly from the link:

The resulting device, pictured above, includes a 200MHz Marvell PXA255 processor with 64MB of RAM and 16MB of flash storage, 10/100 Ethernet, WiFi, and an SD slot which was fitted with a 2GB memory card.

There's another name for such a device

[jdb2]

It's called the "Killer NIC" [killernic.com]. It's a PCI Express network card which offloads network packet processing to a custom embedded Linux distro running on a 400MHz ARM processor with 256MB of RAM, and oh, it works with Vista. As it's independent of the main CPU, it can run applications, such as a bittorrent client [bigfootnetworks.com], while the main CPU attends to other tasks while still acting as a NIC for the main CPU even if one of the on-board applications is also network oriented -- they call this "Flexible Network Architecture" [killernic.com] or "FNA apps." Oh, and did I mention that it has a USB port for storage of such applications and any associated data ( such as files downloaded via Bittorent ) on a USB flash drive?

Another "great innovation" from Microsoft.

jdb2

Re:Perfect for the computer lab

[MichaelSmith]

If it had Wifi, you could just stick it to the bottom of a table at your favorite coffee shop.

You might need to build a dumb USB power supply for it though. How about a 9 volt battery, a resistor and a zener diode?

Re:KillerNIC?

[Vu1turEMaN]

No. Not at all.

It's already been done

[Anonymous Coward]

You can purchase a linksys router that will download your torrents to a usb hdd or cf card. One less thing that takes up a usb port.

Re:Perfect for the computer lab

[colsandurz45]

You might need to build a dumb USB power supply for it though. How about a 9 volt battery, a resistor and a zener diode?

How about that's extremely inefficient. For an additional $0.50 you can get a voltage regular or DC-DC converter. Come on, I'm on the digital side of EE and I know better.

Re:Perfect for the computer lab

[Pentium100]

2GB memory card - not nearly big enough. My torrent PC has 320GB hard drive which sometimes is too small.

A nice idea though. Now add a IDE or SATA port to it and make it autonomous, well, like a PC with the torrent software, so that I can:

1.set up the network, load the .torrent files, disconnect it from my PC, connect it to a battery and leave it somewhere to download. The ability to change MAC address would be useful.
2.If it is used as a network card - the small CPU should still work and download files so that if the host PC freezes or has a BSOD the downloads continue.

Re:KillerNIC?

[blitzkrieg3]

In a way this is the exact opposite. The KillerNIC is designed to offload network processing to a host OS on the NIC while the computer is on. It promises do deliver better performance by using more power.

The NIC in the article acts a passthrough when the computer is on, and only starts doing its work when you turn the host PC off. It promises to deliver better energy usage by shutting the PC off.

Re:Perfect for the computer lab

[nathan.fulton]

Hence SD. You can get 8GB for like $20.00. That's enough data that you will want some of it before the whole thing fills up -- meaning you can delete what's already there and let it fill up again.

Re:why get one of these when

[Charan]

there are so many other low-powered devices that will do so much more.

The important part of this work isn't that there is another device to do your downloading. Yes, there are better devices for that.

What these guys have done is design one way to keep your PC in low power mode as long as possible. One reason that people keep their computers on is that they want network services to be available. (Some keep their computer on because it's downloading torrents. I keep my computer on because I might want to SSH in or access my files remotely.)

This device is one way to keep a computer network-accessible while it's in a low-power sleep. (Hence the name "Somniloquy": talking in one's sleep.) They do this by putting a proxy between the computer and the network. The computer can go to sleep and have the proxy take over network functions for it.

This turns out to be a very general approach. For some types of network access, this device can get away with ignoring the data. For other accesses (like when I try to SSH in), it can wake the computer from sleep to process the request. For some trivial protocols like ping, it's easy to let the proxy just respond.

They show that it's still possible to get some power saving in complex protocols. As an illustration of its generality, they were able to implement BitTorrent within this design. Other protocols may give similar benefits. But they aren't about to implement everything out there.

Re:There's another name for such a device

[dissy]

Can it continue to download torrents and such while the computer is powered-down/in stand-by?

Sorry for the double reply. But it seems I was incorrect. There is no mention anywhere on their website about remaining active when the OS isn't. The PDF spec sheet, and their technical details page both don't even mention that as a feature.

I didn't bother digging through their forums, but I'd prefer to hear from someone who has gotten this device to actually function in that way (and ideally a HOWTO)

Re:Perfect for the computer lab: recipe for FAIL

[macraig]

From the article:

When the host PC initiates sleep, the Somniloquy detects this and transfers network state to the secondary processor, including ARP table entries, IP address, DHCP lease details, and wireless SSID, thereafter becoming capable of "impersonating" the host.

Sorry... still no anonymity. Did you actually think the same developer responsible for DRM-enforcing Windows Vista would actually help produce a device that might make you immune to it?

Re:There's another name for such a device

[master811]

Wrong, the Killer NIC doesn't run whilst the PC is sleeping.

Re:Perfect for the computer lab

[n7ytd]

As long as we're in pedantic mode, a LM7805 (or any other linear regulator) will save no more power than a zener and resistor. A better option would be to start with a voltage source closer to the 5V that you want (say a 6V battery pack) and use a low dropout regulator.

Even with an efficient switchmode regulator, a 9V battery wouldn't last terribly long at these loads. You might be able to get overnight out of it, though.

As long as we're leeching bandwidth from the library or computer lab, might as well hook it up to their AC power, too.

A more interesting application would be to leave something like this inside the drop ceiling of the men's room of your favorite corporate-espionage target for a week at a time.