Nicko van Someren writes: > The estimate > of the cost of construction I gave was "some hundreds of > millions of dollars", a figure by which I still stand.
But what does that mean, to specify (and stand by) the cost of construction of a factoring machine, without saying anything about how fast it runs? Heck, we could factor 1024 bit numbers with a large abacus, if we don't care about speed. A cost figure is meaningless unless in the context of a specific performance goal. > I was then asked how fast this machine would run and I tried > to do the calculation on the spot without a copy of the > proposal to hand, and came up with a figure on the order > of a second based on very conservative hardware design. > This figure is *wildly* erroneous as a result of both not > having the paper to hand and also not even having an > envelope on the back of which I could scratch notes. And yet here you say that it took you completely by surprise when someone asked how fast the machine would run. In all of your calculations on the design of the machine, you had apparently never calculated how fast it would be. How could this be? Surely in creating your hundreds of millions of dollars estimate you must have based that on some kind of speed consideration. How else could you create the design? This seems very confusing. And, could you clarify just a few more details, like what was the size you were assuming for the factor base upper bounds, and equivalently for the size of the matrix? This would give us a better understanding of the requirements you were trying to meet. And then, could you even go so far as to discuss clock speeds and numbers of processing and memory elements? Just at a back of the envelope level of detail? Adam Back wrote: > The mocking tone of recent posts about Lucky's call seems quite > misplaced given the checkered bias and questionable authority of the > above conflicting claims we've seen quoted. No, Lucky made a few big mistakes. First, he invoked Ian Goldberg's name as a source of the estimate, which was wrong. Second, he presented Nicko's estimate as being more authoritative than it actually was, as Nicko makes clear here. And third, he fostered panic by precipitously revoking his key and widely promulgating his "sky is falling" message. We wouldn't be in this situation of duelling bias and authority if people would provide some minimal facts and figures rather than making unsubstantiated claims. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]