3 ms·
> When you've finished designing it you've then got another 1/3 of getting it manufactured at a decent cost with a decent yield. The difference here is that th
by ethbro 10y ago
> When you've finished designing it you've then got another 1/3 of getting it manufactured at a decent cost with a decent yield.
The difference here is that this is an already proven design? Have a competitive bid process for the right to market under the trademark, eliminate factories you flat out don't trust, then require ability to randomly sample and test on Pi's side.
If pass rate drops below agreed parameters, revoke the trademark and pick another factory. Then let the factory self-QA or face the consequences.
I can't imagine there are no factories in China that can make a profit on a chip that's being made profitably in the UK.
The only argument I can see against it would be that a commercial market doesn't exist in any volume. But I can't imagine there wouldn't be decent profit vs {insert lower priced Pi clone here}.
... The other argument would be if Pi has an exclusivity agreement with Sony UK (who I believe is the majority manufacturer) that precludes this kind of deal in exchange for pricing?
> "unusual chip-on-chip technology"
You mean the package-on-package mounting of the SDRAM on top of the BCM2835? Defer to your experience, but if Raspberry Pi is doing this then how expensive/rare is the investment?
I'm honestly trying to reconcile the following statements: "They're hard to manufacture" + "We make a profit on each one sold" + "We can't afford to make them at commercial scale"
- IanCal 10y ago> I can't imagine there are no factories in China that can make a profit on a chip that's being made profitably in the UK. One of their aims was to produce things in the UK. They didn't meet this initially, but with scale managed to bring production at least largely within the UK.
- ethbro 10y agoIsn't the entire reason we're having the "Pi can't / won't sell in industrial quantities" conversation because they can't scale production?
- IanCal 10y agoTheir initial scale at the first launch was too small to work with UK manufacturers, a bit later with the first version they were able to order large enough runs to have production in Wales iirc.
- mfrykman 10y agoPicking a manufacturer is a several month-long process by itself, and would require building out an operations/production engineering team for ongoing production. Imagine producing 50,000pc/mo and having to do in-depth quality inspection on an sample size of, say 500pcs. Who is going to do the inspection? That's a lot of Pis. How do you distribute? Do you ship a box of 50,000 to your warehouse and then mail them out 1 at a time to customers? Do you form retail partnerships? How do you front the money for a 50,000pc order? Say they cost $3 per board, that's $150,000 up front in capital tied up for, say, 1 month of lead time, 2 weeks of transit time, and 1 month until you get paid by the customer - that's $425,000 at any time tied up in inventory (150k*2.5months). Do you negotiate payment terms with the supplier? It's difficult to negotiate terms without a history. Who does the negotiation? What do you do when your box of 50k has an defect? None of these issues are insurmountable, but there is a lot of necessary overhead that comes with mass production of anything. Deciding to MP Pis is an organizational decision that requires significant changes to company structure and resource allocation.