Word: costs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...further boost to an already vital industry. Far from rendering the big computer obsolete, the miracle chip has opened the way for the design of custom-made supercomputers more powerful than any thing dreamed possible a few years ago. At the same time, the chips are radically lowering the cost of the minicomputers. These small computers, in turn, are being used for more and more of the routine functions that until recently had to be handled by main frames - at considerable cost to the user...
...modest compared with the revenues of the entire computer industry, are expected to grow by a startling 50% annually and exceed $800 million by as early as 1981. Behind this remarkable rise are the incredible economies of scale involved in the manufacture of the chips; once the complex and costly task of designing them and preparing them for production has been completed, the price per chip becomes almost exclusively dependent upon how many are sold. As a result, every time cumulative production doubles, the chips decline in price by about 30%. Meanwhile, declining prices stimulate increased sales, and these...
Office Equipment. Before the miracle chip, companies that wanted a computer had to choose between either huge and highly expensive main frame units or smaller, less powerful - but still costly - minicomputers. By radi cally lowering the cost of the traditional minicomputer, miracle chips have dramatically expanded the business market for the minis; their sales are growing at a remarkable 40% annually. At the same time, the chip-equipped minis are proving to be an economical way to get more value for the money out of an existing main frame. They store information and process it lo cally, keeping it handy...
...uncover. In 1973 officers of Eq uity Funding Corp. of America, a Los Angeles-based insurance firm, used the company's computer to give a false impression of Equity's assets by fabricating $2 billion worth of phony life in surance policies. Since big computers can cost tens or even hundreds of dollars a second to operate, their unauthorized use for private purposes is also a form of theft. For instance, last month two Defense Department employees were indicted in San Francisco for stealing $2,000 worth of time on a Government computer in order to develop...
...transistors in an area barely a sixth of an inch long and an eighth of an inch wide. In computational power, the micro processor almost matched the monstrous ENIAC - the first fully electronic computer, completed in 1946 - and performed as well as an early 1960s IBM machine that cost $30,000 and required a CPU that alone was the size of a large desk. On his office wall, Hoff still displays Intel's original advertisement: "Announcing a new era of integrated electronics ... a microprogrammable computer on a chip...