> A few years ago, reviewing Michio Kaku's book on the future, I cited the
> view that
>
> < Immediate prospects include a hugely expanded Internet, driven by
> plummeting computer chip prices--well under a dollar apiece by 2000, around
> 5 cents by 2005, a cent by 2010. >
>
> How did that work out, so far?
Not 100% sure... A few years ago the highest end processors were in the
486/Pentium range on the Intel side, the '040 from Motorolla, and the
R4000 from MIPS. Those chips (especially th motorolla and MIPS chips) are
widely used in small electronic devices, and I imagine that the wholesale
price is within an order of magnitude of that price range - I could see them
coming in under $1 in lots of 10,000 for an '040 or similar.
A good consumer network card (Netgear FA100TX) runs about $24,99 here, using
the Tulip chipset. The price of the chip in that case must be in the
handfull-of-pennies range, given the markup and costs of manufacturing.
I'd say the answer is a guarded "probably" if you mean chips that were
available a few years ago. And a "definitely not" if you are talking about
the mid-line consumer computer chips.
You can't even get an order of actualy 'chips' for under $0.79 around here.
Silicon cheaper than potatoes? :)
-Corey
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:56:22 MDT