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From: mark@calvin..westford.ccur.com (Mark Thompson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: (Video) Hardware Idiots ?
Message-ID: <62146@masscomp.westford.ccur.com>
Date: 17 Jun 91 16:35:59 GMT
References: <1991Jun10.103543.22097@news.iastate.edu> <1991Jun10.135715.23727@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> <1131@stewart.UUCP> <1991Jun15.032812.15122@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> <rkushner.8493@sycom.UUCP>
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Reply-To: mark@calvin.westford.ccur.com (Mark Thompson)
Organization: Concurrent Computer Corp. Westford MA.
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In article <rkushner.8493@sycom.UUCP> rkushner@sycom.UUCP (Ronald Kushner) writes:
>Lets say it costs $27 million to engineer the custom chips from a clean sheet
>design. With only 12,000 Amiga 3000's sold, it would cost $2166 per unit just
>to pay off the engineering, not including added production costs of making
>different parts. Lets say only 300 people go for this option? Commodore has
>lost $20++ million dollars on this pet project.

Ron made some very valid points in his article but $27 million for custom
chips is rather exorbitant (even to illustrate a point). The last custom
graphics processor I did was a state of the art rendering engine for real
time (30Hz) antialiased graphics display for the Lockheed YF-22 aircraft
cockpit.  Total cost was under $2 million and it was the largest chip
fabricated in the company's history. Suffice it to say that it is not very
likely that Commodore would undertake an ASIC design of this complexity
and magnitude (given their market and their low price point goals).
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