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Life cycle cost models for comparing computer family architectures

Authors:

John J. Cornyn,

William R. Smith,

Aaron H. Coleman,

William R. SvirskyAuthors Info & Claims

AFIPS '77: Proceedings of the June 13-16, 1977, national computer conference

Pages 185 - 199

https://doi.org/10.1145/1499402.1499437

Published: 13 June 1977 Publication History

Abstract

This paper describes the methodology used to compute life-cycle costs of military computer systems as a function of three competing Military Computer Family Architecture candidates (the IBM S/370, DEC PDP-11, and Interdata 8/32), and it presents separate results of applying this methodology to two different models (called Top-down and Bottom-up) of computer resource requirements in the military. The architecture comparisons are made by projecting, computing and combining estimates of hardware and software costs with architecture-dependent factors to obtain life-cycle (development plus maintenance) costs and cost ratios. The results indicate that the three architectures have roughly comparable life cycle costs for the two models. However, neglecting the uncertainties of the input data and assumptions, the bottom-up results indicate that in most circumstances the DEC PDP-11 is superior to both the IBM S/370 and Interdata 8/32 architectures. The top-down model results, on the other hand, indicate that the S/370 is superior for high (greater than one) software-to-hardware cost ratios, the Interdata 8/32 is slightly better for low (less than one-fourth) ratios, and the PDP-11 is best in between.

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Cited By

Stone H(1979)Life-Cycle Cost Analysis of Instruction-Set Architecture Standardization for Military Computer SystemsComputer10.1109/MC.1979.165869312:4(35-47)Online publication date: 1-Apr-1979
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/MC.1979.1658693
Fuller SShaman PLamb DBurr W(1977)Evaluation of computer architectures via test programsProceedings of the June 13-16, 1977, national computer conference10.1145/1499402.1499434(147-160)Online publication date: 13-Jun-1977
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1499402.1499434
Fuller SStone HBurr W(1977)Initial selection and screening of the CFA candidate computer architecturesProceedings of the June 13-16, 1977, national computer conference10.1145/1499402.1499433(139-146)Online publication date: 13-Jun-1977
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1499402.1499433
Show More Cited By

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cover image ACM Other conferences

AFIPS '77: Proceedings of the June 13-16, 1977, national computer conference

June 1977

1039 pages

ISBN:9781450379144

DOI:10.1145/1499402

Copyright © 1977 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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AFIPS: American Federation of Information Processing Societies

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 13 June 1977

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Cited By

Stone H(1979)Life-Cycle Cost Analysis of Instruction-Set Architecture Standardization for Military Computer SystemsComputer10.1109/MC.1979.165869312:4(35-47)Online publication date: 1-Apr-1979
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/MC.1979.1658693
Fuller SShaman PLamb DBurr W(1977)Evaluation of computer architectures via test programsProceedings of the June 13-16, 1977, national computer conference10.1145/1499402.1499434(147-160)Online publication date: 13-Jun-1977
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1499402.1499434
Fuller SStone HBurr W(1977)Initial selection and screening of the CFA candidate computer architecturesProceedings of the June 13-16, 1977, national computer conference10.1145/1499402.1499433(139-146)Online publication date: 13-Jun-1977
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1499402.1499433
Burr WColeman ASmith W(1977)Overview of the military computer family architecture selectionProceedings of the June 13-16, 1977, national computer conference10.1145/1499402.1499432(131-137)Online publication date: 13-Jun-1977
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1499402.1499432
Fuller SBurr W(1977)Measurement and Evaluation of Alternative Computer ArchitecturesComputer10.1109/C-M.1977.21752310:10(24-35)Online publication date: 1-Oct-1977
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/C-M.1977.217523

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