4 ms·
At $500k wouldn’t be cheaper to reverse engineer it, or even start a clean room reverse engineering project and open source it?
by ryacko 7y ago
At $500k wouldn’t be cheaper to reverse engineer it, or even start a clean room reverse engineering project and open source it?
- InvaderFizz 7y agoThere is a cost-benefit-analysis at play, and even if one makes the security argument, that is "what if" talk, not concrete numbers that are coming out this year. A $500k tester's depreciation is based on a 10+ year service life. The ones that make it past that point turn into security nightmares and profit centers at the same time. These are large and complex machines, with hundreds or thousands of moving parts. A competent reverse engineer and driver developer likely could solve many of the driver interface issues and move things to newer platforms, but why invest hundreds of thousands per year in maybe updating something that still works? Who is going to pay for that? Oh, you want to raise your rates to pay for it? I guess they'll move all of their testing development to the competitor in Asia. This isnt some big name you have heard of, but this is one of the places that all the big names go to to test their silicon during development.
- pritambaral 7y agoI guess the idea there is that it will always be cheaper to just not touch anything.