Move the budget and three things move with it: the computers you own, the way a request travels through them, and what the university can actually do. Every change on this page states the rule that caused it, and every rule is the one the budget engine really runs.
How to use this page. Set the money at the top and read down: what it buys, how a request moves through it, what it unlocks, and why — each in plain sentences the engine writes itself. Every control has an (i) that says what it changes and where its number came from, and the last section lets you disagree with any assumption and watch the page redo itself.
One-time equipment and launch money
$120,000
Who gets access
How busy a day
Ordinary is anchored to a measured full-campus deployment. Exam week is a stress envelope about nine times that.
Price list
Education pricing is the verified Apple education store price. fact
Which machines
Previous is the lineup Apple replaced on 25 August, at Apple Refurbished prices: one price, single units listed, matched quantity unknown. unknown
Who runs it
The student option is a professional owner plus a paid student team at $18 an hour. est
Cloud research pool (metered frontier models)
An account with a spending limit, in the cloud — not a machine, and not the 512 GB node. Deferred automatically under $40,000 so a small budget never loses machines to it.
The optional high-memory research computer
One Mac Studio with 512 GB of memory, running one larger local model for about two research conversations at a time.
Share spent on people, not machines
18%
Catalysts, artifact awards, clinics. Under 10% is how seats go unused.
NVIDIA teaching computer
For learning and porting to NVIDIA tooling. Not modelled as a serving machine.
Pilot scale
01
The computers this buys
Machines appear and disappear as the money moves.
02
How a request moves
One question's path from a college to an answer, drawn from the fleet the budget actually bought. The machine room itself is on the topology page.
Mac mini — daily and fast lanes128GB Studio — heavy work256GB Ultra — strongest single-machine modelNVIDIA teaching computerSparethickness = conversations at oncecloud route, Public class onlydashed outline = an option, not bought
03
What this budget unlocks
Filled circle = funded here. Each rung shows the rule that decides it.
04
What you do, and why
Every sentence is generated from the engine's own rules.
05
Disagree with an assumption? Change it.
Every figure below is an input, not a fact. Edits recompute the whole page.
Assumptions — conversations per machine, the model on each tier, demand, spares, the funding floors
Money in whole dollars, education pricing verified 2 September 2026. Machine capacities are planning estimates
that the validation pilot's own measurements are meant to replace. This page runs the same engine as the
budget simulator and the printed scenarios; the underlying method and every source are in
the guide, §13. Prepared independently by Utlyze. Not a publication of, endorsed by, or affiliated with Utah Valley University.