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Santa Clara, Calif. - A key mixed-signal IC announced by National Semiconductor Corp. last week forms the keystone for hardware monitoring functions vital to Intel Corp.'s Desktop Management Interface (DMI). The chip will make it possible for a remote server to monitor physical quantities inside PCs attached to the network, including such vital signs as power supply voltages, component temperatures and fan speeds. The hope is that such remote monitoring will anticipate many system hardware failures and dramatically reduce administrative costs for networked personal computers.
"We have statistics that say the support cost for a PC in the workplace is over $8,000 per year," said Simon Prutton, director of marketing at National, based here. "We believe that one solution to this problem is to identify emerging hardware problems before they cause a system crash, and report them automatically over the LAN to someone who can fix them."
How it functions
National's LM78 is the sensor processor for...