The Cost Of KLAT2

KLAT2's cost is somewhat difficult to specify precisely because the most expensive components, the Athlon processors, were donated by their manufacturer, AMD (Advanced Micro Devices). Here, we quote the retail price for these processors as found on Multiwave's WWW site on May 3, 2000. Similarly, although most applications use only 64 nodes, KLAT2 also has 2 "hot spare" nodes and an additional switch layer that are used for fault tolerance and system-level I/O; because we consider these components to be an integral part of KLAT2's design, we include their cost. We also included 16 spare NICs and several spare surge protectors. Due to University of Kentucky purchasing guidelines and part stocking issues, purchases from the same vendor were sometimes split in odd ways and there were various inconsistencies about how shipping was charged; although the vendor totals are correct, we have had to approximate the component cost breakdown in these cases.

The following table details the cost of KLAT2. Although specific vendors are listed, note that being listed here should not be taken as an implicit endorsement by the authors or by the University of Kentucky. Aside from donation of the Athlons, there were no exceptional discounts or other arrangements with any of the vendors.

In summary, KLAT2's total value is about $41,200, with the primary costs being roughly $13,200 in processors, $8,100 in the network, $6,900 in motherboards, and $6,200 in memory.

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