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SubjectRe: Scheduled Transfer Protocol on Linux
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: Imagine hot swappable web server hard disk. Plug your disk straight into
: the switch, telnet in, configure apache, upload content, done.

Right.

: I believe it's possible, but I think Larry's estimates of 50% extra cost
: ($200 -> $300) are off the wall. The Itsy shows you can make Linux boxes
: small enough, but the pricetag (several thousand $) also shows that it's
: economically impractical.

Err, I was an architect at Cobalt, before that SGI, before that Sun.
I've designed and shipped products from all of those companies, both
hardware and software products. I'm intimately familiar with the Cobalt
Cube BOM, having gone over it and over it looking to reduce the cost by
a nickel here and a nickel there. I've done the same thing at SGI and
Sun (though at Sun I was on the other end of some of these discussions,
the most wacko of which was the serial port argument at Sun).

Whatever, I'm sure my experience is very boring, but that same experience
says that it is very doable to put an embedded processor down on the
drive and ship it at at a profit for an extra $100. It won't have
much memory, probably 8MB, at that price, but can definitely be done.
Don't underestimate the power of volume. And customers will deal with
having to buy extra memory.

The really nice thing about 3.5" drives is that people aren't concerned
about power or heat at that size (laptop drives are another matter).
There are a bunch of people making processors which are designed to deal
with heat/power but they are all for laptops (and carry the related
laptop markup). We aren't talking about that market, we can afford
all the power we want and heat isn't an issue in this config. There
are lots of processors that would work for very little money.

: > I would much rather see that $100 going towards more storage capacity and
: > buffering, rather than a CPU running linux. I think a lot of people would
: > agree with me on that one.
:
: Yup. 100mhz Pentium and motherboard is literally $50, including case and
: NIC and RAM.

That's extremely misleading for this topic. You are confusing the
"limited to stock on hand, customer limited to 1" throw-away-at-a-loss
price with production prices. I'll personally kiss your ass in public
in front of rolling cameras if you can show me a supplier, today, right
now, who will deliver 10,000 units of 100Mhz pentium, 16MB, motherboard,
case, 100baseT, guarentee a DOA rate of less than 2%, and guarentee a
run rate of an additional 10,000 a quarter.

Can't be done, dude, I know, I've tried. And I put together machines
all the time, I know exactly what it costs to get something that works.
You do pretty much get what you pay for.

So, sure, I'm willing to believe you can buy one machine like what you
described but that is very, very different from a production run.

Oh, yeah, don't forget the cost of assembling that stuff. When I was
at Cobalt, it was looking like about $25/box just to put it together.

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