Like others have mentioned, 50k small CPUs like 8085 can be made in a single production batch (i.e. a small basket containing silicon wafers, which passes through all manufacturing steps), so a number like this is likely to be the minimum amount that can be produced.
replyThe customer would order this minimum quantity, and most of it will probably be kept as spares.
That number was probably shaped by minimum production-run requirements, alongside the need for software development units, along with other factors, like the use in Trident II and other quests we may not know about.
replyThere isn't really a minimum production run for silicon chips, they do small test runs all the time to test new designs.
replyAt least not from a practical perspective.
From an economic perspective, stopping after a single small run is just wasteful. The upfront design costs are so high, and the per wafer costs are so slow that you might as well make a lot extra. Maybe you can find a use for them, or sell them to someone else.
Trident 2 (article says used 8 of these chips), and google says around 400-424 made, so easily would have soaked up 4000 of these CPUs with spares alone. So if anything, the production run seems light.
replyI read they had their own fab, so the minimum production run aspect would appear moot.
> other quests we may not know about.
replyBack then an interface between terrestrial computer systems and a Zeta Reticulan spacecraft required a small supercomputer on our side.
I assume the tooling and process are such that it’s a one-time thing, as in, this is the most of these chips that we could ever possibly need for all time. They’re not going to be able to spin up the same fab and build the same chips the same way again in the future whether that’s 5 or 50 years in the future. Given the long lifespans of military systems, it’s maybe not so crazy.
replyI also am curious about that statement. Seems something got mixed up between the quantity of the full run and the quantity for the probe.
reply