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Art Edwards wrote:<br>
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<pre wrap="">I think I'm jumping into the middle of a conversation here, but our
branch is the shop through which most of the DoD processor programs are
managed. For real space applications there are radiation issues like
total dose hardness and single even upset that require special design
and, still, special processing. That is, you can't make these parts at
any foundry (yet). There are currently two hardened foundries through
which the most tolerant parts are fabricated. Where the commercial
market is ~100's of Billions/year, the space electronics industry is
~200million/year. So parts are expensive, as Jim Lux says. But more
importantly, the current state-of-the-art for space processors is
several generations back. Now, with a 200 million market/year, who is
going to spend the money to build a new foundry? (anyone?) It's a huge
problem, and beowulfs in space will not give the economies of scale
necessary to move us forward.
I don't know if this has been discussed here, but have you thought about
launch costs? They're huge. Weight, power, and mission lifetime are the
crucial factors for space. These are the reasons that so much R&D goes
into space electronics. I apologize if I have gone over old ground.
Art Edwards
On Wed, Apr 16, 2003 at 04:41:36PM -0700, Jim Lux wrote:
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<pre wrap="">A
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<pre wrap="">There's also a non-negligble cost of having more items on the "bill of
materials": each different kind of part needs drawings, documentation,
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<pre wrap="">test
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<pre wrap="">procedures, etc., a lot of which is what makes space stuff so expensive
compared to the commercial parts (for which the primary cost driver is
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<pre wrap="">that
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<pre wrap="">of sand (raw materials) and marketing) so again, systems comprised of
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<pre wrap="">many
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<pre wrap="">identical parts have advantages.
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<pre wrap="">Hmmm, so the primary cost determinant of VLSIC's is the cost of sand...?
Verrry Eeenteresting...
Now marketing, that I'd believe;-)
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<pre wrap="">Say it costs a billion dollars to set up the fab (which can be spread over
2-3 years, probably), and maybe another half billion to design the
processor (I don't know... 2500 work years seems like a lot, but...?)...
How many Pentiums does Intel make? It's kind of hard to figure out just how
many chips Intel makes in a given time (such being a critical aspect of
their profitibility), but...
consider that Intel Revenue for 2002 was about $27B....
As for marketing... in an article about P4s from April of 2001:
Intel has told news sources that it plans to spend roughly $500 million to
promote the new technology among software makers, and another $300 million
on general advertising.
Such enormous volumes are why commodity computing even works..The NRE for
truly high performance computing devices is spread over so many units...
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Dear sir,<br>
Plz feel free to jump right in, nice to have you posting on this most exceptional
list,( for the most part one of the best on the web, IMHO)... But you do
bring to mind an excellent point.. One of endless debate since I can recall
in my early days of high school science club and launching rockets and modeling
ballistic scenario's at the local Wofford College computer lab time that
Dr. Olds was so generous and kind to provide... What we concluded then and
applies equally as to the current discussion is that cost of access to space
could be greatly reduce if we changed the launch platform to that of the
earliest days of high speed space research... such as the X-15 project...
Some of us went on to working world married a gypsy princes and so locked
into a certain destiny... Others in our class went on to places like M.I.T
where they continued to pursue their space dreams... Like David Thompson
founder of Orbital Research and the launch of the first commercial space
rocket called Project Pegasus ... Which was, in fact, first carried into
space by the same B-52 used to launch the X-15... I think recent events clearly
demonstrate that there is certainly a need to re visit this equation....
Everything old is new again... "Generations come and generations go... and
they have no memory."<br>
Thanks again Art, nice to have your post<br>
<br>
C.Clary<br>
Spartan sys. analyst<br>
PO 1515<br>
Spartanburg, SC 29304-0243<br>
<br>
Fax# (801) 858-2722 <br>
<br>
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