Jupiter FPA Plan Mar8

This memorandum, dated March 28, 1983, from Don Hooper, outlines a proposed plan for the 4050 Floating Point Accelerator (FPA) project, emphasizing necessary organizational changes and a detailed planning methodology.

Key points:

• Motivation: To successfully develop the 4050 FPA, the document advocates for significant organizational changes, specifically empowering the engineers doing the work to lead project planning. This aims to create a more realistic, detailed, and trustworthy plan regarding "who is doing what and when."

• Proposed FPA Organization: For the FPA design, a team is proposed consisting of:

  • 1 supervisor/manager
  • 6 engineers (comprising hardware designers, hardware designer/simulation & tools programmers, simulation & tools programmers, and diagnostic test programmers).
  • 1 KL10 computer with terminals for the team.

• Detailed Planning Methodology: The core of the plan involves defining approximately 63 "task & check blocks." For each of these blocks, the plan will specify 10 types of information:

  1. Task description
  2. Predecessors
  3. Resources for the task
  4. Resources for the check
  5. Exit criteria
  6. Quantity of items (subtasks)
  7. Task duration (by people and time)
  8. Check latency (wait time after task)
  9. Check duration (by people and time)
  10. Loopback connectivity and its percentage chance.

• Supporting Documents: The memorandum is accompanied by flowcharts detailing the "4050 FPA Process" (Part 1 and Part 2, outlining stages from defining goals to gate-level design), a format for the "Task-Check Block," and preliminary examples of how specific tasks (like listing instructions, defining performance goals, or scheduling) would be structured according to this methodology.