Originally Posted by uglybear' post='393014' date='Feb 18 2007, 08:32 PM

Adding smart terminal (ie dedicated UI processing module) speeds up system since it offloads UI tasks to another module. You PC CPU does do graphics - GPU does. CPU does not perform IO - disk or network controller does. Distribution of tasks is a good thing since distributed systems are, in fact, often less complex, more reliable and easier to maintain provided they are correctly designed. That's why Internet is working so well as opposed to cental processing mainframe with remote VT 220 terminals. One system gathers and displays data, another does processing - standard pattern since advent of client/server architectures.