[p_l]

To make it even funnier - Digital's last Alpha CPU, EV7, which was essentially the ancestor of AMD K8 (which finally brought "mesh" networking to mainstream PCs), actually had IP-based internal management network!

Each EV7 computer had, instead of normal BMC, a bigger management node connected to 10MBit ethernet hub (twisted ethernet, fortunately :P), and this network was then connected to things like I/O boards, power control, system boards... including to each individual EV7 CPU. Each so connected component had a small CPU with ethernet that was responsible for interfacing their specific component to the network, and when the system booted part of it involved prodding the CPUs over ethernet to put them into appropriate halt state from which they could start booting.

[classichasclass]

This kind of thing with functional domains accessible over Ethernet existed in at least one laptop as well, where you could connect to the "nodes" once you busted into it (my article): https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2023/04/of-sun-ray-laptops-mips-...