Re: Cost of military grade 80486 processors?

"Allen Thomson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> I gotta question or three.
>
> The latest Chinese illegal tech transfer story has the PRC
> acquiring eighty MG80486 DX2-5 processors for $540,000. MG seems
> to mean "military grade."
>
> See
>
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/sns-ap-scholar-guilty-plea,0,
623713.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-headlines
>
> That's $6750 per chip which, in its civilian version, went for a
> couple
> of hundred bucks.
>
> Is that a standard markup for such items? What does the MG provide
> that the vanilla version doesn't? And what would the PRC need with
> eighty such things that it couldn't use the commodity version for?

Military spec electronics is normally 10 times the price of the civilian
equivalent.  Even so that price is too high.

Military chips frequently work down to -40 degrees centigrade
where as home computers freeze up at 0 degrees centigrade.
The semi-conducting layers on the chips are normally thicker
allowing use in high radiation environments such as after the
bomb has been dropped.

The second major mark up on this chips will be because they
are BLACK MARKET chips.  There is a ban on exporting military
equipment to China.

Andrew Swallow