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I’m a little jealous of the engineers who get to work on this project. It would be so exciting to build something like this from the ground up, improving it con

I’m a little jealous of the engineers who get to work on this project. It would be so exciting to build something like this from the ground up, improving it constantly. The challenge, scope, and meaning are compelling, no?

akiselev 6y ago
I've worked on smartphone electronics and it's not as exciting as you think. I'm pretty sure they chose the i.MX8 because they couldn't source Snapdragons so they got a little luckier with NXP, but the vast majority of the engineering done on a smartphone is in firmware and software with absolutely shitty support from the manufacturer. Bug fixes that only get distributed to customers after they've ran into the bug and struggled with it for weeks (instead of just putting the bug fix into the BSP), no version control or historical view of vendor drivers or modified kernels, firmware that has "hello world" levels of polish, documentation that is only available under three levels of NDAs, and few open source projects to learn from for what are usually almost-but-not-quite bespoke PCBs. Worst of all, consumer hardware products can sell at such scale that it's worth it to keep an engineer working on a single bug for months at a time only to find out that it was a bug in vendor silicon all along - it is soul crushing. Silicon manufacturers have very little respect for software and it really makes the entire process a lot more painful than it should be. Iterations in electronics are really expensive (my last project cost $30k for 10 assembled prototypes not including of our labor) so most people just copy as much of the manufacturers' reference design as they need. They pour over PCB layout notes and look at how the manufacturer or other customers did and mostly just copy them. Most of my engineering decisions are based on about a dozen black box helper apps that take in my fab's capabilities and signal specs and spit out DRC rules. It gets a little trickier with antenna design but that's often outsourced because you need very specialized facilities for FCC certification anyway. All in all, it's just like working on a complex distributed system. There are so many things to juggle like R&D budget, per unit COGS and space budget, suppliers and part availability, and supply chain orchestration that it ends up being lots of boring work just to coordinate between all the different experts involved with small bursts of productivity when everyone is properly aligned.
- dkdk8283 6y ago
  Sounds more like writing open kernel drivers, except you get paid. Still aspiring to work on something challenging is healthy and I respect GP’s sentiment!
- google234123 6y ago
  And NXP is generally considered a very good vendor to work with!
  - wott 6y ago
    Yes, only because the reference point is the average of all manufacturers :-) Last time I checked, they hadn't corrected the documentation of their previous line of SoCs (almost 10 years old), despite acknowledging the errors I reported many ears ago. You can either consider that personal support was good, or that, by not correcting stuff they know is false, they don't give a damn about wasting every other user's time (and wasting the support staff time again and again each time a user will ask the same question). I also remember using a simple piece of software from them (a GUI for pins assignment, which basically consisted of a list of checkboxes, or some kind of simple spreadsheet if you want): that super basic thing leaked several gigabytes of memory per hour, just idling. Well, I couldn't let it on 1 hour, I had to take the habit to stop and restart it after 15-20 minutes...
    - akiselev 6y ago
      I can't believe I forgot to mention the errata! A mentor got so pissed off at Qualcomm one time that he delayed the start of his next contract by a month so he could farm a list of professional electrical engineers working for companies that use Qualcomm chips and developed a relationship with many of them just to create a secret errata sharing network of EEs that were covered under Qualcomm's NDAs. Even a few lawyers at one of the biggest companies who got wind of the idea decided it was worth the risk. Sadly he passed away before he had the time to really get it off the ground.
    - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
      I've been around the block in major, Top 10 silicone companies. The app you talk about was probably developed by some summer intern on a tight schedule and never documented, then someone else took over. They literally don't give a flying fuck about software. One manager I had once was so clueless, he couldn't understand that the GUI of the C# app I made had no code behind it, and kept asking why clicking the buttons isn't doing anything no matter how many times I tried to explain that a GUI can exist without functionality and it's a separate effort to implement that. Certain apps we were using internally were based on same Java version from 12 years ago since the person who developed it is now a senior line manager and also the sole maintainer. Then they brought in some Agile/Scrum consultant to increase efficiency and he implemented 45 minute daily stand-ups with 10 people and half of them remote via phone from another country and then he spent most of the day chasing us around the building asking how soon story X will be done. Then they outsourced the whole thing to Poland. Working in that industry as a SW developer has been a colossal pain and a huge setback for my career I try to slowly erase from my resume.

akiselev 6y ago

I've worked on smartphone electronics and it's not as exciting as you think. I'm pretty sure they chose the i.MX8 because they couldn't source Snapdragons so they got a little luckier with NXP, but the vast majority of the engineering done on a smartphone is in firmware and software with absolutely shitty support from the manufacturer. Bug fixes that only get distributed to customers after they've ran into the bug and struggled with it for weeks (instead of just putting the bug fix into the BSP), no version control or historical view of vendor drivers or modified kernels, firmware that has "hello world" levels of polish, documentation that is only available under three levels of NDAs, and few open source projects to learn from for what are usually almost-but-not-quite bespoke PCBs. Worst of all, consumer hardware products can sell at such scale that it's worth it to keep an engineer working on a single bug for months at a time only to find out that it was a bug in vendor silicon all along - it is soul crushing. Silicon manufacturers have very little respect for software and it really makes the entire process a lot more painful than it should be. Iterations in electronics are really expensive (my last project cost $30k for 10 assembled prototypes not including of our labor) so most people just copy as much of the manufacturers' reference design as they need. They pour over PCB layout notes and look at how the manufacturer or other customers did and mostly just copy them. Most of my engineering decisions are based on about a dozen black box helper apps that take in my fab's capabilities and signal specs and spit out DRC rules. It gets a little trickier with antenna design but that's often outsourced because you need very specialized facilities for FCC certification anyway. All in all, it's just like working on a complex distributed system. There are so many things to juggle like R&D budget, per unit COGS and space budget, suppliers and part availability, and supply chain orchestration that it ends up being lots of boring work just to coordinate between all the different experts involved with small bursts of productivity when everyone is properly aligned.

dkdk8283 6y ago
Sounds more like writing open kernel drivers, except you get paid. Still aspiring to work on something challenging is healthy and I respect GP’s sentiment!
google234123 6y ago
And NXP is generally considered a very good vendor to work with!
- wott 6y ago
  Yes, only because the reference point is the average of all manufacturers :-) Last time I checked, they hadn't corrected the documentation of their previous line of SoCs (almost 10 years old), despite acknowledging the errors I reported many ears ago. You can either consider that personal support was good, or that, by not correcting stuff they know is false, they don't give a damn about wasting every other user's time (and wasting the support staff time again and again each time a user will ask the same question). I also remember using a simple piece of software from them (a GUI for pins assignment, which basically consisted of a list of checkboxes, or some kind of simple spreadsheet if you want): that super basic thing leaked several gigabytes of memory per hour, just idling. Well, I couldn't let it on 1 hour, I had to take the habit to stop and restart it after 15-20 minutes...
  - akiselev 6y ago
    I can't believe I forgot to mention the errata! A mentor got so pissed off at Qualcomm one time that he delayed the start of his next contract by a month so he could farm a list of professional electrical engineers working for companies that use Qualcomm chips and developed a relationship with many of them just to create a secret errata sharing network of EEs that were covered under Qualcomm's NDAs. Even a few lawyers at one of the biggest companies who got wind of the idea decided it was worth the risk. Sadly he passed away before he had the time to really get it off the ground.
  - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
    I've been around the block in major, Top 10 silicone companies. The app you talk about was probably developed by some summer intern on a tight schedule and never documented, then someone else took over. They literally don't give a flying fuck about software. One manager I had once was so clueless, he couldn't understand that the GUI of the C# app I made had no code behind it, and kept asking why clicking the buttons isn't doing anything no matter how many times I tried to explain that a GUI can exist without functionality and it's a separate effort to implement that. Certain apps we were using internally were based on same Java version from 12 years ago since the person who developed it is now a senior line manager and also the sole maintainer. Then they brought in some Agile/Scrum consultant to increase efficiency and he implemented 45 minute daily stand-ups with 10 people and half of them remote via phone from another country and then he spent most of the day chasing us around the building asking how soon story X will be done. Then they outsourced the whole thing to Poland. Working in that industry as a SW developer has been a colossal pain and a huge setback for my career I try to slowly erase from my resume.