Can we have a moment of silence (or several million dollars) . . . please?

[Greg Lindahl]

> 3) Take the cost to design and fab a cpu (>$1 Billion) and divide
>    by number of units sold and see how much you need to make
>    a living.

Hello? A cpu does not take up an entire fab. If it's built in small
volumes, it shares with other items.  The Power3/4, MIPS, and
Transmeta chips do not have dedicated fabs; I don't think the Samsung
fab that makes Alphas is dedicated either. The whole reason Digital
sold their fab to Intel was to take advantage of the fact that it was
mostly idle, but that Intel can fill it up. Today, if you want
something fabbed in low volume, like the custom chip on a Myrinet
board, which contains a CPU, you go to one of the 2 companies in
Taiwan that offers a fab for low-volume use.

On the design side, AMD proved that they can design a cpu with 1/10
the money it costs Intel. The Alpha team has likewise been extremely
cost effective. 1/10 the design cost on 1/100 the sales does make for
higher overhead, but not necessarily a prohibitive cost.

One of the most annoying parts of mostly off-topic discussions is when
people give "facts" that aren't. I know your intentions are good, but
can we discuss commodity clusters?

-- greg