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Enterprise gear today can pretty quickly and easily add up to seven digits per rack. At a previous job, I personally handled a specialized network processing ca
by bityard 2y ago
Enterprise gear today can pretty quickly and easily add up to seven digits per rack. At a previous job, I personally handled a specialized network processing card that retailed for over a quarter million dollars.
The PDP-11 seems like a bargain for what was fairly close to cutting edge technology at the time.
- a2800276 2y agoAnd most "departments" nowadays won't have a seven-figure racks of hardware. Especially not incredibly arcane hardware that possibly only 100's of people on earth are capable of operating at all, which require you to upgrade your electrical and possibly floors and furthermore are so novel conceptually that one is not even sure what problems would be applicable to it.
- kragen 2y agoSee https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42058952 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42058952 for details on current and past capital intensity in the US. It doesn't take a very big department in most industries to get past seven figures of capital stock, sometimes just a single person and virtually always less than ten people.