pmetzger@lehman.com said: Doug Merritt says:
2^56 bytes equals 10^7 gigabytes.
First off, you are forgetting a factor of eight.
No, I'm not. I *am* assuming disk, obviously, since I quoted $1000 per gigabyte, which is disk price range, not RAM.
and if you use disk storage your whole device is going to run far, far, far slower.
Untrue. The disks will be used in a predictably serial fashion, and therefore read-ahead can be arranged such that everything is in RAM by the time the algorithm is ready to use it, so the whole thing runs at RAM speeds.
however, and have to factor in the cost of the rest of the equipment, like power supplies, enclosures, controller cards, computers to run the whole thing, I'd say we are talking a trillion dollars, give or take a factor of 20%.
It's true I didn't factor in the cost of the systems, but that doesn't give more than a factor of 2 to 5 in cost (depending on assumptions about the precise kind of pc clone used), where you seem to have come up with a factor of 100.
Or say there's a quantity discount in orders totalling a million units,
Say that my aunt was a Greyhound Bus if you like. You're dreaming, bub.
Skip the sarcasm and pick a different quantity discount. If you don't like my 90% discount for quantity 1 million disk drives, pick another one. There is always some discount for quantity, and this is just a back of the envelope estimate, so I don't care much what you pick. 0% discount leaves the estimate in the region of $10 billion...that's still not inconceivable, merely expensive. That was my only point, that this *could* be done, and I've proven that, despite your misunderstandings. Doug