Files
hermes-brain/ideas/passepartout-economics/comparison-with-symbolics.org
Hermes 9b2be10c77 Restructure economics doc into 27 org-roam interlinked nodes
Replace monolithic passepartout-economics.org with directory of
org-roam style nodes, each with :ID: property and cross-references
using [[id:uuid][title]] format.

27 nodes organized by theme:
- Core: index, triad overview, agora, stoa
- Revenue: verification appliance, domain gate packages, evaluation
  harness, skill marketplace, agora usernames, PDS service, compute marketplace
- Strategy: investment thesis, moats, licensing, patents, AI industry impact
- Analysis: lisp economics, sufficiency flip, time estimates, cost structure,
  gate rule encoding, upgrade lifecycle, biology parallels, symbolics comparison
- Big money: verification monopoly, infrastructure lock-in

Old file kept as archive with redirect links to new structure.
2026-05-21 19:36:02 +00:00

19 lines
1.1 KiB
Org Mode

:PROPERTIES:
:ID: 00ab3a4d-e3de-5605-a67d-12935bb36ab5
:END:
#+title: Comparison with Symbolics Genera
#+filetags: :passepartout:history:symbolics:comparison:
| | Symbolics Genera (1980s) | Passepartout (2020s) |
|---|---|---|
| Lines | ~1,000,000 | ~21,000 (self-driving target) |
| Developer-years | ~10 years, large team | ~1 year, 1-3 devs |
| OS | Built from scratch in assembly + Lisp | Runs on Linux (free OS layer) |
| Hardware | Custom Lisp Machine (entire computer) | PCIe card (FPGA or Tenstorrent) |
| Market | $50K-$100K/seat | $5K-$50K/appliance |
| Scope | Full OS + environment | Cognitive agent + hardware acceleration |
The Symbolics comparison is instructive: they built a full Lisp OS from scratch. Passepartout runs on Linux, providing the OS layer for free. The hardware integration is a PCIe card, not a replacement of the entire host. The scope is dramatically smaller — ~2% of the code for a fraction of the functionality that matters most.
See also: [[id:9af13fff-9725-542b-93b1-a555bc74ad72][Lisp economics]], [[id:13e6ae54-2d24-5aa0-b1cd-a7e8e749aa70][Self-driving Lisp Machine]]