NSA Can Spend a Billion on a Computer

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

Doug Merritt wrote:

> 2^56 bytes equals 10^7 gigabytes. At roughly $1000 per gigabyte,
> that equals 10^10 bucks...10 billion dollars. Or say there's a quantity
> discount in orders totalling a million units, and you get the whole
> capacity for 1 billion dollars.
> 
> Well, that's a bit steep for me, but there's no question but that the
> NSA could afford it. Still, what do you say I wait a few years until it

Probably. But I suspect we'd know it had been built.

Norm Harrdy described for us his experiences with the "Harvest"
machine at NSA in the early 60s. (Bamford also describes this in some
detail...worth taking a quick look at, I think.)

Harvest was built by IBM as a special-purpose add-on, or auxiliary
processor I suppose, to the IBM "Stretch," then the fastest computer
in the world.

Harvest was quite impressive for its time, as Norm explained it to us.
A 300 nanonsecond cycle time, with a 64-bit word. Lots of core memory,
special tractor tape drives to load in data.

The Harvest machine was particularly good at brute force breaking of
Hagelin-type rotor machines, the "DES of its day" (the NSA had
encouraged foreign governments to buy surplus U.S. rotor machines,
assuring them that changing to their own rotor settings would make
them good as new...this did not, and NSA's knowledge of the machine
designs gave them a headstart on cracking the ciphers).

So, I would imagine that the effort put into Harvest in 1962, and
later into the financing of both Cray Research (confirmed) and
Thinking Machines (suspected by many), would possibly be put into the
breaking of modern ciphers.

Cost for Stretch (in 1962 dollars): $13 million.
Cost for Harvest (in 1962 dollars): $13 million.
Cost for special tape drives:   $5 million

Total Cost (in 1962 dollars): approximately $30 million.
Total Cost (in 1993 dollars): approximately $100-200 million,
depending on what inflation index one uses.

Would NSA spend $200 million on cipher-busting machines?

Well, modern spy satellites often cost upwards of a bilion apiece, so
this seems possible.

Note that NSA contracted with National Semiconductor several years
back to have a dedicated wafer fab in a secure area of Fort Meade, to
supply custom chips. 

But could such a project escape notice--and publicity--outside the
NSA? CPU desiginers would have to be brought it, and no doubt much of
the work would be contracted out.

Any rumors floating around?

--Tim May

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