Comment: True in many cases. Making estimates of projected savings is easier in ad hoc cases than in general.
4. Having facilities immediately accessible for calculating nuclear-reaction kinematics, magnetic analyzer field strengths, and other phenomena during the course of experiments saves time and promotes efficiency.
Comment: True, however, much of this work can be done ahead of time, and much of it requires only a relatively short, simple calculation which can be executed on a medium-sized computer, sometimes on a small one.
5. Given a sufficiently large computer system in the laboratory, its use for complicated data reduction and for theoretical calculations may produce an important saving of funds which might otherwise have been spent at the computing center.
Comment: This point may sometimes be valid, depending on a number of conditions, but the installation of a large computer as part of the data-acquisition system essentially on the basis of this argument is questionable, in view of the excellent facilities offered by modern computing centers.
6. Some expense for the development of computer systems and computer systems methods is justifiable as an investment in methodology.
Comment: True, although there is some question about the choice of places where such work should be done and about the correct source of funds to support it.
B. WHERE SHOULD LARGE-SCALE CALCULATIONS BE DONE?
At the very outset of planning one should examine very closely the question of the large-scale calculating required in the overall execution of the research program of the laboratory; then, if, as usual, it turns out that a substantial amount of complex calculating is anticipated, one should consider carefully the feasibility of planning to do that part of the work at the most readily accessible computer center in the vicinity, so as to be able to concentrate one's own energies and resources, especially capital investment, on the data-acquisition system. The use of a modern computer center offers enormous advantages, and most computing centers would welcome support. If this course of action is chosen, provisions must be planned from the start for computer-language communication between the computer center and the nuclear research laboratory via a medium such as magnetic tape. (Direct wire transmission will often not prove feasible.)
Some key questions are: