3 ms·

It's not exactly "insane" - a bottle of fizzy-pop requires a fair amount of materials. Hundreds of grams of sugar, potable water, preservatives, flavorings. And

It's not exactly "insane" - a bottle of fizzy-pop requires a fair amount of materials. Hundreds of grams of sugar, potable water, preservatives, flavorings. And they weigh what, 300 grams each? That's a hefty BOM and a fairly heavy product. Integrated circuits are tiny specks of material, usually encased in comparatively huge plastic rectangles which are still only a few mm on each side. The cost is almost all capital investment. After years of having a working design and process, the marginal cost of each chip is negligible. Most of what you actually pay for is probably validation and transportation. What's really expensive is getting an application running on one with the reliability that people expect of a consumer electronic device. Yes, modern Cortex-M cores can do just about everything, but it takes some expertise and/or time to get them to do anything in particular. Anyways, how much do you pay for a few hundred milligrams of acetaminophen? Is that also completely insane?

raxxorrax 7y ago
> that people expect of a consumer electronic device Consumers are way too entitled. Look at aeronautic applications where it just has to work for a few hours until you have to reboot everything. But anyway, even if development costs amortize with giant quantities, it still requires complex machinery and a trained workforce for manufacturing. It is evidently possible, but the result is still amazing. Development for the chips is costly, but in many applications the same principle seems to apply. Porting to another processor can happen if a chip becomes available that is a few cent cheaper. I have often seen that, even though porting isn't trivial and in many cases pretty error prone in my opinion. (compiler change, specs just completely different...) > Anyways, how much do you pay for a few hundred milligrams of acetaminophen? Is that also completely insane? Honestly it seems that it is. I got the impression that something about the price is wrong. That is why I often have the thought that pharma might rip off their patients and chip manufacturers concentrate on exploitation of workers instead. Pharma might not have this option to that degree because counterfeiting is easier to accomplish in that domain. Not that I want to complain about cheap and powerful hardware too loudly...

raxxorrax 7y ago

> that people expect of a consumer electronic device Consumers are way too entitled. Look at aeronautic applications where it just has to work for a few hours until you have to reboot everything. But anyway, even if development costs amortize with giant quantities, it still requires complex machinery and a trained workforce for manufacturing. It is evidently possible, but the result is still amazing. Development for the chips is costly, but in many applications the same principle seems to apply. Porting to another processor can happen if a chip becomes available that is a few cent cheaper. I have often seen that, even though porting isn't trivial and in many cases pretty error prone in my opinion. (compiler change, specs just completely different...) > Anyways, how much do you pay for a few hundred milligrams of acetaminophen? Is that also completely insane? Honestly it seems that it is. I got the impression that something about the price is wrong. That is why I often have the thought that pharma might rip off their patients and chip manufacturers concentrate on exploitation of workers instead. Pharma might not have this option to that degree because counterfeiting is easier to accomplish in that domain. Not that I want to complain about cheap and powerful hardware too loudly...