Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!van-bc!ubc-cs!uw-beaver!Teknowledge.COM!unix!garth!fouts@bozeman.ingr.com (Martin Fouts) From: fouts@bozeman.ingr.com (Martin Fouts) Newsgroups: comp.sys.super Subject: Re: Supercomputer ROI Message-ID: <301@garth.UUCP> Date: 9 May 90 16:55:02 GMT References: <201@csinc.UUCP> <253@garth.UUCP> <202@csinc.UUCP> <13881@dime.cs.umass.edu> Sender: fouts@garth.UUCP Distribution: na Organization: INTERGRAPH (APD) -- Palo Alto, CA Lines: 59 In-reply-to: yodaiken@freal.cs.umass.edu's message of 4 May 90 01:15:17 GMT In article <13881@dime.cs.umass.edu> yodaiken@freal.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes: From: yodaiken@freal.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) In article <202@csinc.UUCP> rpeglar@csinc.UUCP (Rob Peglar) writes: >In article <253@garth.UUCP>, fouts@bozeman.ingr.com (Martin Fouts) writes: >> The trick is to do the R&D cheaply enough or fast enough that the >> product has a long enough market life time to recover costs and make >> money. If you can't do that, you shouldn't be in business. > >True. The point is to let the market, not the bankers, decide. >-- My bad experience with a start-up fold-down did not lead me to great confidence in the market either. Investors seem interested in quick profits, and too technically ignorant to make good decisions. Tranistors were a poor draw in the market until many years of DOD funding developed both the technology and the applications to a point where manufacturing became cheaper. Note the niether the Japanese nor the Europeans are willing to wait for markets to be developed and controlled by someone else before getting into a field. They are quite happy to let the government force and entice corporations into areas that they think are good for the nation --profitable or not. According to a book on Bell Labs that I have been reading lately this is another urban myth. Acording to the book, DOD did very little to fund transistor work. There were two problems with marketing transistors. One was reliability and the other was acceptance. Once the reliability problems were solved, A major effort was needed to convince engineers to design with transistors, and to find products where they were truely useful... In fact, on careful investigation, one can find very little technology developed as a result of government research which actually achieved commercial acceptance. I've been trying for enough years that I now assert that no US government funding has had sufficient impact on a consumer technology to pay for itself, or introduce a significant impact on the market. Before you all flame me about the early history of computers, go back and carefully compare the relationship of the the military projects like eniac to the commercial work done by companies like sperry and ncr. You will be surprised at how little impact removing the government from the computer industry would have really had. BTW, the big win for transistors was cheap pocket radios. Twenty years later the big win for ICs was cheap radios. US industry missed both of these obvious markets. -- Martin Fouts UUCP: ...!pyramid!garth!fouts ARPA: apd!fouts@ingr.com PHONE: (415) 852-2310 FAX: (415) 856-9224 MAIL: 2400 Geng Road, Palo Alto, CA, 94303 If you can find an opinion in my posting, please let me know. I don't have opinions, only misconceptions.