Re: USR Lowers Pricing

John G. Thompson (jgt10@livingston.com)
Fri, 04 Apr 1997 11:13:11 -0800

At 09:48 AM 4/4/97 -0600, Jonah Yokubaitis wrote:
>On Fri, 4 Apr 1997, John G. Thompson wrote:
>
>|At 09:45 PM 4/3/97 -0600, Jonah Yokubaitis wrote:
>|>Bullshit. R&D is the biggest cost in the TC/PM3/MAX. The PM3 is a
>|>486/66 with some very nice software in it :-) The DSP modem cards I
>|>doubt cost more than $15-25/modem. The entire chassis costs livingston
>|>< $1000 to build I would bet.
>|
>|If you did make that bet, you'd lose.
>|
>We are talking about _actual_ manufacturing costs here, *NOT* R&D.

Uh...were did I say R&D?

>Read what I said again. I am well aware that is it QUITE expensive to
>design a product from scratch, but once you have the design, the
>manufacture is not all that expensive.

Depends on what you consider expensive. Rather than go into further
discussion I agree with your basic points.

>|>Livingston is a software company that loads their software onto fairly
>|>off the shelf hardware.
>|
>|BZZZZT. Thank you for playing. Please come back and play again sometime.
>
>oh really? You think that AMD cpu and 72pin ram and siemens
>controllers and analog devices DSPs are something special?

Is there something special about the chips? My understanding is that they
are a grade level or two above the grade used in your PC. I could be
wrong, and probably am.

The point I was trying to make is that the PMs, ORs and IRXs are custom
designed machines. Most, if not all, of the multi layer boards are
designed by Livingston for those specific purposes. THAT makes theses
machines radically different than a PC.

Do you compare the MAX or the CISCO 2501 to a PC running linux or NT with
serial cards and asynch expanders? Why not? They use the same kinds of
chips.

>Its the
>SOFTWARE that makes the PM3/PM2 special.

I agree.

>I would bet that livingston
>could port ComOs to a RISC platform and make the current x86 platform
>meaningless.

Livingston COULD do what you suggest and, yes, it would make the x86
platform 'meaningless'. Although I suspect you would have LOTS of x86
customers telling us differently.

>This holds true for most vendors of decent products, look how many
>different platforms cisco has IOS running on (mips/68k/etc). Its the
>SOFTWARE that makes cisco great, its the SOFTWARE that makes
>livingston great, its the SOFTWARE that makes netapp great.
>
>Its the SOFTWARE! (Did I say this before?)

It is the software that make a netapp great because that is the only thing
it is...software.

My point is that software is only HALF of a router. The hardware is
equally important. We could debate which is more important, but the basic
point is that one without the other is useless.

JGT

--
John G. Thompson       Livingston Enterprises Inc.    Phone: (800) 458-9966
JOAT(MON)              4464 Willow Road                 Fax: (510) 426-8951
support@livingston.com Pleasanton, CA 94588      http://www.livingston.com/