Chapter 3

A REVIEW AND ANALYSIS OF EXPENDITURES

In this chapter we present a review and an analysis of total expenditures for on-line computing in a large number of laboratories supported by the Atomic Energy Commission and the National Science Foundation through 1968. (Appendix B gives the background for this economic survey.)

A. THE NATURE OF THE DATA

Laboratory directors were requested to supply a separate report covering each data-acquisition system currently in use or under construction and, in addition, to supply an estimate of anticipated future requirements for the period 1970-1974. The high-energy field was excluded. Information was also requested on process-control applications, e.g., systems to control accelerator operation or to monitor progress and to execute control functions during the course of an experiment. In every case details were to be supplied regarding the nature and capability of the system and its cost in dollars and manpower during the design, construction, and operation phases.

In all, 46 different systems were reported by 22 different institutions (listed in Appendix B). Berkeley, Brookhaven, and Oak Ridge together reported 21. The various systems range in total cost (including manpower) from about $40,000 to about $1,000,000. Most are in operation, but a few are under construction, and a few others are in the advanced proposal or design stage. Plans for 16 substantial expansions and proposed expansions of existing systems were also reported. There was a wide range of thoroughness of compliance with the request; for example, cost estimates ranged from the most meticulous analyses down to one case where no cost information whatever was supplied. In assessing the reliability and completeness of the data the reviewer concluded that in general the costs of manufactured hardware items such as central processors (CPU's), line printers, card readers, rotating memory devices, etc. should be regarded as reasonably accurate, while estimates of the amount of manpower used, and its cost, seemed much less reliable; in fact, the manpower item was frequently not covered, especially in connection with the preparation of systems software. Whenever a report was more or less complete, and there seemed to be a reasonable good basis for doing so, the reviewer estimated appropriate values for missing items by making use of figures given in more complete reports on similar systems constructed or operated under similar circumstances.

With regard to labor costs, government laboratory people seem to be in a much better position to supply figures than are university people. The reviewer got the impression that the university respondents have, on the average, a much less clear idea of the dollar value of people's time and a much less clear idea of how to estimate realistically the man-hours consumed by various projects.

B. BREAKDOWN OF DATA FOR ANALYSIS

Because of the nature of the data the reviewer separated each system into three parts for the purpose of analysis: (1) the data-acquisition central processor (CPU); (2) the standard computer input-output (I/O) devices such as magnetic tapes, disks, card readers, printers; (3) the complete data-acquisition subsystem (DAS). (See Figure 12.) This breakdown has the advantage that the costs of the first two parts of the system are usually fairly accurately known. The cost of the DAS includes the price of all manufactured units closely involved in its assembly, including scalers, ADC's, pulse-height analyzers, and the like (but not detection equipment), together with the expenses associated with all special construction, including engineering, fabrication, and parts. All engineering and fabrication costs associated with the entire system can logically be charged against the DAS, because the CPU and I/O parts, being assembled from standard manufactured items, generally are installed by the manufacturer without much effort or expense on the part of the laboratory personnel. Questions occasionally arose in connection with the assignment of the cost of interfacing the DAS to the CPU. Such costs were assigned to the DAS when the units involved were of a custom-built nature and to the CPU when they were manufacturer's items incorporated in the computer frame. The very wide range of types of data-acquisition equipment in use necessarily contributes to the spread in DAS costs. Although a number of items of uncertain costs are lumped together in this definition of the DAS, the procedure adopted is believed to have led to a valuable overall picture of the pattern of expenditures.

TABLE 8 Types of Computers Used in the Systems Reported -------------------------------------------------------

Type Number -------------------------------------------------------

ASI 210 1 ASI 2100 2 (3)

CDC 160A 2 CDC 3100 1 (3)

DDP 116 1 DDP 124 1 (2)

EMR 6050 1 EMR 6130 1 (2)

IBM 1800 2 IBM 360/44 2 IBM 7094 1 (5)

PDP-4 2 PDP-5 1 PDP-6 1 PDP-7, 7A 6 PDP-8, 8I 8 (24) PDP-9 6

SCC 660 1 (1)

SDS SIGMA 2 1 SDS SIGMA 5 1 SDS SIGMA 7 2 SDS 910 1 (8) SDS 920 1 SDS 925 1 SDS 930 1

SEL 810B 2 SEL 840A 1 (3)

Varian 620I 2 (2) --- TOTAL 53 -------------------------------------------------------

A fourth item of importance in the analysis is the cost of system software programming. This is almost entirely a manpower item, assuming that program testing and debugging can be carried out without charge for the computer time involved. Here there is considerable uncertainty in the estimates, especially with respect to university installations as well as systems which have been in operation for a long time, e.g., the large system at Argonne.

The total cost of a system is taken to be the sum of the four items listed above, namely, the CPU, the standard I/O system, the DAS, and the system software expenditures. In all likelihood the total costs tend to be too small rather than too large because of incomplete assignments of charges of various sorts, especially manpower. In many cases the totals seem reliable to 10 or 20 percent, while in a few others an error of 30 or even 40 percent would not be surprising.

C. TYPES OF COMPUTERS

Table 8 gives a listing of the 27 different types of computers incorporated in the systems reported, together with the number of units of each type mentioned. Of the 27 types, 24 are machines designed with this general sort of application in mind; the exceptional three are the CDC 160A, the CDC 3100, and the IBM 7094. Evidently, the PDP machines are the most popular (24 units), followed by SDS types (8 units), and IBM types (5 units).

D. SOME TOTAL COSTS

Of the 46 system reports, 35 were sufficiently complete to be useful in a detailed analysis. A histogram showing the distribution of these in total cost is given in Figure 13. One immediately sees that few systems cost less than $100,000; in fact only four were reported in this range. However, it must be pointed out that information was solicited regarding only those systems which had cost approximately $50,000 or more. The most common range is $100,000 to $200,000, with 12 examples. The total cost of the system at the Yale Van de Graaff laboratory was not known when the histogram was prepared, but the hardware is reported to cost about $750,000 to duplicate and about $655,000 to copy, so if allowance is made for the cost of developing the software and for other manpower uses the cost would rise substantially. (This system is not one of the 35. The conditions under which the Yale-IBM development are being carried out are so special that manpower costs cannot be assigned on the basis used in other cases. See Chapter 2, Section E.)

A breakdown of total costs for the 35 systems is given in Table 9, showing separately the total amounts involved in each of the four categories defined above. Evidently, about 60 percent of the cost goes for standard computer hardware, while about 40 percent goes for special hardware and software required for data acquisition. Table 10 shows separately the hardware and labor costs in the DAS item. Evidently, hardware is twice as expensive as labor in this case, on the average.

TABLE 9 Summary from 35 "Complete" Reports ----------------------------------------------------------

Percentage Subsystem Cost of Total ----------------------------------------------------------

CPU's with memory and TTY $ 3,933,000 38.5 Standard peripherals 2,293,000 22.4 Data-acquisition subsystem 3,038,000 30.0 Systems software 931,000 9.1 ----------- ----- TOTAL $10,195,000 100.0 ----------------------------------------------------------

TABLE 10 Data-Acquisition Subsystem ----------------------------------------------------------

Hardware $2,022,000 Labor 1,016,000 ---------- TOTAL $3,038,000 ----------------------------------------------------------

E. BREAKDOWN OF COSTS BY SYSTEMS

In Figure 14 the cost of the standard I/O equipment is shown plotted against the cost of the CPU for 36 different systems. The high point labeled "T" represents a system having many high-speed magnetic tape drives. The low point labeled "R" represents the Rochester system, which must be considered unbalanced, because its only "standard" I/O equipment is four Dectapes, which should, perhaps, have been defined as CPU items, since they cannot be used for communication with most computing centers. If a line printer and two IBM-compatible tape units were added, the Rochester point would have to be raised at least as high as the position R'. The straight line shown in Figure 14 was drawn with a slope of one half. It may perhaps be taken to represent a rough statistical reflection of the collective experience accumulated over the past six years or so regarding the relative costs of I/O and CPU equipment. In Figure 15 DAS costs are plotted against CPU costs for the same 36 systems. Here the spread of the points is worse than in the previous case, as expected for the reasons mentioned earlier. The exceptionally high point labeled "PHA" represents a system with three large pulse-height analyzers, two of them 20,000-channel units, in the DAS. The straight line shown has the equation _y_ = 8.0 + 0.7_x_. The overall DAS cost is 77 percent of the total CPU cost.

F. ROTATING MEMORY DEVICES

One magnetic drum unit and 11 disks were reported to be in service (in eight different laboratories). Plans were reported for the installation of six more disk units and one drum (in five different laboratories). Recognition of the importance of rotating memory devices in display applications is evident in the reports.

G. SYSTEMS ON-LINE WITH COMPUTING CENTERS

Two systems were clearly stated to be in successful on-line operation with external computing centers. (At least one more example, at the University of Manitoba, is known: there a PDP-9 system is linked to an IBM 360/65.)

There are plans in various stages of development to connect nine different data-acquisition systems on-line with computing center machines, in most cases to operate on a delayed-access basis.

H. ANTICIPATED FUTURE EXPENDITURES

In cases where updating or enlarging of existing systems was said to be in progress, the costs reported were usually assigned by the reviewer to the present system, especially when money for the expansion seemed already available or very likely to become available. In many cases plans were in a less advanced state, but a fairly definite idea of the amount of money to be requested for expansion or for completely new systems was expressed. Table 11 summarizes these anticipated costs.

TABLE 11 Anticipated Future Expenditures ------------------------------------------

For expansion of systems $3,280,000 For additional systems 1,455,000 ---------- TOTAL $4,735,000 ------------------------------------------

I. INVESTMENT IN ACCELERATORS, COMPUTER SYSTEMS, AND LABORATORY BUDGETS

C. V. Smith and George Rogosa have kindly made available approximate AEC budget figures for nine typical university laboratories chosen from those which had returned information in response to Dr. McDaniels' request. (The laboratories are Colorado, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Texas, Wisconsin, Washington, Yale Linac, and Yale Van de Graaff.) After adding similar information for Rochester, it was possible to get a rough idea of the relative capital investments in accelerators and in computer systems and to compare those figures with the annual operating budgets (for 1969).

total annual budget ------------------------ = 0.33 cost of bare accelerator

total computer cost 0.22 ± 0.06 by averaging ------------------------ = 0.23 -> separate ratios for each cost of bare accelerator system

total computer cost ------------------------ = 0.70 total annual budget

If the ratio of the total computer cost to the annual budget is calculated for each of the ten cases, and then the results are averaged, one gets 0.6 ± 0.3. If one quite unusual set of data (from a laboratory with a small AEC budget) is eliminated the last result becomes 0.56 ± 0.21, while the earlier results remain essentially unaltered. For the same nine examples we find that the average of the ratios of total computer system costs to bare accelerator costs is 0.22 ± 0.062, thus this ratio is significantly more consistent. It is emphasized that the results given in this paragraph refer only to experience at universities.

J. PROCESS-CONTROL APPLICATION

Tables 12 and 13 give a summary of present and anticipated process-control applications disclosed by the survey.

TABLE 12 Current Process-Control Applications -----------------------------------------------------------------

Laboratory Systems -----------------------------------------------------------------

ANL Van de Graaff accelerator; large scattering chamber setup; x-ray and neutron diffractometers; automatic plate scanner BNL Neutron spectrometers; x-ray and neutron spectrometers, nine in all Michigan State Cyclotron shim coils ORNL Slow neutron time-of-flight to measure capture and fission cross sections Yale Electron linac and beam optics; experiments with the linac -----------------------------------------------------------------

TABLE 13 Future Process-Control Applications ----------------------------------------------------------

Laboratory Systems ----------------------------------------------------------

Michigan State Control of entire accelerator system Minnesota Tandem Van de Graaff accelerator and beam transport system Stanford Nuclear reaction experiments UCLA Limited control of cyclotron ----------------------------------------------------------