High-Tech Transfers To China Continue

Insight Magazine ^ | July 29, 2002 | Zoli Simon

[Myrddin]

The consequences of permitting faster computer hardware into the hands of our enemies can be illustrated by the value of one our own military software projects. The overall package contains 1 million lines of Fortran and 1 million lines of C. In the mid 80s, the software ran on a Burroughs mainframe that filled the computer room. Execution of all the steps to create the final product took about 18 months. The code was migrated to a DG minicomputer. The same steps could be accomplished in 6 months. When I came to the program in 1991, the new target hardware was a Sun 640/MP with 16 GB of disk. The staff was inexperienced in UNIX, but their first pass at a port did the same work in 3 1/2 weeks. After pushing a software improvement process and a bit of training, the same work could be done in 36 hours. An individual pilot could get specific sortie work done in 15 minutes on a SPARC laptop. That was the state of the art by January 1993. It is now 10 years later. CPUs are 50 times faster now. Most desktop machines have 3 times as much disk as the 640/MP had. Assuming no improvement at all in the software, the execution time for the whole process would be under 1 hour today. The limiting factor now is the how fast the human users of the system can input the updated parameters.

[goldilucky]

Thought you'd find it of interest.

[goldilucky]

You're most welcome!

[WatchNKorea]

bttt

[WatchNKorea]

"...the execution time for the whole process would be under 1 hour today."

bttt

[Publius]

Thanks. I thought my China essay had gone down the memory hole at FR.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Sounds like we're really walkin' into it!

Dragon's Fury BUMP!

[goldilucky]

That's why when you read my post #52 you'll see I'm in the know of what's going on.

[WatchNKorea]

BTTT

[WatchNKorea]

BTTT

[WatchNKorea]

BTTT

[WatchNKorea]

BTTT