> The recent thread on memristors even highlighted that R&D costs are 1/100th of total cost, with marketing taking the lion's share. I read that too, but what

> The recent thread on memristors even highlighted that R&D costs are 1/100th of total cost, with marketing taking the lion's share. I read that too, but what they meant was that development of an actual product costs Hewlett-Packard 10 times as much than the research of the underlying technology. And commercialization costs again 10 times more. "Commercialization" is a catch all term, of course marketing, but for the most part this means building factories, tooling and machinery. Ramping up production is difficult and binds tons of capital investment.