On-Line Data-Acquisition Systems in Nuclear Physics, 1969: Chapter 3

C. V. Smith and George Rogosa have kindly made available approximate AEC budget figures for nine typical university laboratories chosen from those which had returned information in response to Dr. McDaniels' request. (The laboratories are Colorado, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Texas, Wisconsin, Washington, Yale Linac, and Yale Van de Graaff.) After adding similar information for Rochester, it was possible to get a rough idea of the relative capital investments in accelerators and in computer systems and to compare those figures with the annual operating budgets (for 1969).

If the ratio of the total computer cost to the annual budget is calculated for each of the ten cases, and then the results are averaged, one gets 0.6 ± 0.3. If one quite unusual set of data (from a laboratory with a small AEC budget) is eliminated the last result becomes 0.56 ± 0.21, while the earlier results remain essentially unaltered. For the same nine examples we find that the average of the ratios of total computer system costs to bare accelerator costs is 0.22 ± 0.062, thus this ratio is significantly more consistent. It is emphasized that the results given in this paragraph refer only to experience at universities.