From: utzoo!decvax!cca!Deutsch@PARC-MAXC@sri-unix
Newsgroups: net.works
Title: Re: CPU-per-user architectures
Article-I.D.: sri-unix.1479
Posted: Mon May 17 12:55:15 1982
Received: Tue May 18 01:17:49 1982

One thing about your figures doesn't make sense to me.  If a non-bitmapped
terminal has a retail price of $500, then it must cost $125 to make, electronics
AND packaging together.  How can a diskless workstation have more than 4 times
the packaging cost of a terminal, when the package is essentially the same?  I
think the problem here is that you're comparing apples and oranges -- terminal
packages are made in much larger volume than workstation -- but I don't see
why they HAVE TO be significantly different.

The other thing you aren't doing is allocating any cost for the packaging (or
more generally non-electronics cost) of the shared system.  Say you get an
economy of scale such that the non-electronics cost per user goes down by a
factor of 4.  (I actually think this is a bit generous, but you know more about
this area than I do.)  Then the per-user non-electronics cost of the shared system
is an additional $500/4, or price of $500/4*4, or $500.  This puts the shared
system price up to $4000.