To run cpus as cpus rather than offline tasks allocated to a secondary machine, you have certain requirements in terms of their placement on a logic board and proximity to other components. The concept of an imac terminal goes against everything in computing in a very negative manner. The kool-aid picked up with thunderbolt. It was designed with the popularity of notebooks in mind to integrate components that would not fit in such a small chassis. As a design mantra, a modular system is asinine with the number of potential latent bugs it introduces. Storage can exceed the capacity of a single drive or even a few drives. That is why DAS has existed for so many years. That and it allows you to keep backups decoupled from the primary system. If you want a large display, that won't fit in a notebook. Increases in resolution solve some of this, but not all.
Others have presented that concept without the sarcasm. You really get a lot of projections on here.
They have a $300 (retail) cpu option within the Xeon E/EP chips. That compares to the cost of the i7 used in the top imac spec. Do you think they would seek out something even cheaper when it means having to add in another board design? It seems backwards to me.
I'm not sure that would be a successful venture. Other cpus over thunderbolt won't simply appear as cpus. You're basically setting up a network that can take on offline tasks. I don't see how the tie in people keep referencing to grand central dispatch would work here.
