TYPE <GORIN>LETTER.MILLER1
00100     OFFICE MEMORANDUM * STANFORD UNIVERSITY * OFFICE MEMORANDUM
00200   
00300                       LOTS COMPUTER FACILITY 
00400   
00500   
00600                                                   May 9, 1977
00700   
00800   To:        Professor William Miller, Provost
00900   
01000   From:      Ralph E. Gorin, Manager
01100   
01200   Subject:   Upgrade opportunities for LOTS
01300   
01400   Since my  trip to Boston in  mid-April, Digital Equipment Corporation
01500   has offered Stanford a new hardware upgrade package for LOTS:
01600   
01700           256 K words of main memory              $126,000
01800             1 RTP06 200 megabyte disk and channel   47,000
01900             1 RP06  200 megabyte disk               35,000
02000             1 Cache Memory                         100,000
02100           Total list price:                       $308,000
02200   
02300   DEC's  price to Stanford  for this package is  $215,000. The previous
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02400   offer from  Digital that we discussed with you  was the same hardware
02500   as above,  less one  RP06 disk,  for $230,000.   DEC's current  offer
02600   seems to be rather more attractive.
02700   
02800   This  upgrade will double  our memory capacity, more  than double the
02900   speed of the processor, double our I/O throughput and triple our disk
03000   storage capacity.
03100   
03200   To amortize  these upgrades the LOTS budget needs  to be increased by
03300   about $32,000/year.
03400   
03500   The  LOTS system is  already loaded to  an extent where  we doubt the
03600   system's ability to deal with  the expected load increase in the fall
03700   unless we either upgrade  the hardware facilities, decrease the load,
03800   or both. We are investigating  the means by which the software can be
03900   made more efficient.  However, we do not expect that software changes
04000   alone will substantially increase throughput.
04100   
04200   One large  component of  the  anticipated load  increase is  for  the
04300   introductory Computer  Science  courses.   Last fall,  these  courses
04400   included  250 students.  We  estimate that␈this usage  requires us to
04500   support an  additional  14 terminals  for  this purpose  alone.   The
04600   reasons to  move the introductory courses to  LOTS are compelling. If
04700   LOTS  is to fulfill  its purpose in the  University, the introductory
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04800   courses  must be taught using  LOTS so that students,  after only one
04900   introductory  course, can continue  to use LOTS as  a tool throughout
05000   the remainder  of  their  studies here  at  Stanford.  But  LOTS,  as
05100   presently configured, can not handle that load.
05200   
05300   It  would  be  possible,  but  undesirable,  to ␈shed  some  load  by
05400   restricting the  use  of LOTS  to  directed coursework  and  formally
05500   directed projects and research.   One of the accomplishments that was
05600   sought  from LOTS was  the provision of general  access computing for
05700   students.  We  believe that LOTS has been  sucessful in this respect,
05800   and that general access  computing is an educationally valid purpose.
05900   Undirected  projects do, however,  use a significant  fraction of the
06000   LOTS resource  (10  to 15%).   Moreover,  under the  current  funding
06100   arrangement, this use of LOTS is not paid for by anyone, in the sense
06200   that  there  is  no  fund  nor  allocator  of  money  for  undirected
06300   computing.
06400   
06500   As you requested, John McCarthy  and I have talked to Dean Royden and
06600   Dean Kays to see if they  would be willing to allocate a larger share
06700   of their  academic computing budgets to LOTS.  Also,  I have met with
06800   Paul Johnson, Assistant Dean  of the Graduate School of Business, for
06900   the same  purpose.  We  feel  that we  are not  really in  the  right
07000   position  to request the  reallocation of funds.  The  last time that
07100   was  done, it was  done by  the Associate Provost  for computing.  So
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07200   far, we  have had only limited success.   Dean Royden has tentatively
07300   agreed  to allocate  an additional  $10,000/year to  LOTS.  Dean Kays
07400   would  allocate an  additional $5,000  if we  provided more terminals
07500   than originally planned for  the Terman Center.  However, the cost of
07600   the additional  terminals  there will  probably  cost more  than  the
07700   $5,000.  (You  will recall  that  the original  LOTS budget  did  not
07800   provide  any money  for  communicating  with any  remote  terminals.)
07900   Finally, GSB, far fro␈  being willing to allocate additional money to
08000   LOTS,  is now trying  to spend  their entire allotment  at SCIP.  The
08100   attitude at  GSB regarding paying for LOTS depends  to some degree on
08200   their plans  regarding accquiring  thei␈ own  DECsystem 20.   GSB  is
08300   expecting to decide about these things by the end of this month.
08400   
08500   LOTS is  an effective  and economical  educational facility.  We  are
08600   presently serving  about 1200 active student  and aculty users.  With
08700   the  hardware  upgrades  proposed  here  LOTS  can  double  its  user
08800   community and  provide  better service.   We  propose to  double  the
08900   available service with less than a 15% budget increase.
09000   
09100   We may  be criticized  because we  have yet  to firmly  confront  the
09200   resource  allocation problem  at LOTS.  Although  it would  be a good
09300   thing to address this problem, the lack of resources exists as a real
09400   problem  independant of  a solution  (or lack  of a  solution)␈of the
09500   allocation problem.   The best  possible allocation  of the  existing
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09600   resource  will leave many  users without sufficient  computing in the
09700   fall.  Only  an expansion of resources will satisfy  the needs of the
09800   of the user community.
09900   
10000   Finally, there  is some  need  for haste.   Other DEC  customers  are
10100   presently  being quoted 5  to 7  month (or longer)  delivery times on
10200   some  of the  items we need.   We may already  be too  late to obtain
10300   these upgrades for the beginning of fall quarter, but we should try.
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