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Using copyright tools to try to contain published documentation of facts about anything is roughly where, if possible, I boycott anything involved with that com

Using copyright tools to try to contain published documentation of facts about anything is roughly where, if possible, I boycott anything involved with that company to the maximum reasonable extent. It is clear that TI no longer has an interest in developing new products, or figuring out better ways of making existing products, and would instead like to rent-seek and make the world a smaller place.

ChuckNorris89 6y ago
That was clear when Nokia fell and took down TI's OMAP processors with them and they just gave up to Quallcomm's Snapdragon without even putting up a fight. TI is now just rentseeking on their ananlog dominance and whatever sinking boat Intel is, TI is way worse.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Except Nokia is pretty much around, their business was more than just mobile phones, and happen to own Bell Labs nowadays.
  - johnnycerberus 6y ago
    Nokia's Bell Labs is only focused on 5G and 6G technologies. I mean judging by the papers they release they are now a far cry from the wide research spectrum that they had before.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      The point being they still exist and focus on what is profitable.
- alexhutcheson 6y ago
  TI might not be focused on phones and multimedia devices anymore, but their DSP chips are extremely well regarded, and some of their other chips are popular for industrial automation. I don’t think “rentseeking on their analog dominance” is a fair characterization.
  - cushychicken 6y ago
    It's hard not to view this sort of stuff as saber rattling (or, more accurately, whining) from the OSHW community. TI is more than happy to work with you on their most cutting edge designs if you're shipping in appreciable volume. Talking a quarter million chips or more per year. That's just the way the wind blows in their business. Gotta recoup as much R&D expenditure as possible up front. I've worked with them on these sorts of designs. They employ tons of really sharp engineers and still make lots of high quality, very useful chips. You just have to buy enough of them for it to be worth it for TI to work with you. No OSHW application I know of has ever moved enough units to cross this bar. Not even close.
    - snoopen 6y ago
      What makes you think it's the OSHW community? If TI will work with you only if you're high vol then I could see a lot of smaller businesses seeing this tactic working against them too.
      - cushychicken 6y ago
        In TI's eyes - that is, through the lens of order volume and support needed by the customer from TI - the difference between a single small business building HW and a single OSHW is negligible. They get way more ROI by heavily supporting bigCos who will give them millions of dollars of business YOY rather than helping a zillion mom and pop shops who can barely wire a resistor the right way. Think of it as a tacit strategy of "firing your worst customers". Having worked in bigCo vs small Co, there are a lot of small Co and OSHW EEs who barely have a clue what they're doing. It's not worth TI's time or money to help these people out. Upleveling lousy engineers thru support only to net them a 10 piece part order, is a really lousy ROI. (Unless of course we're talking an ASIC or some other astronomically high ROI custom piece. But, I'm assuming that we're not, because I don't work for a military prime contractor.)
    - ryukafalz 6y ago
      I can understand hardware vendors not actively working with you on designs unless you're buying in volume. That's fine, they're a business, they have to make money and not lose money. What I don't understand about the hardware industry is the extent to which they actively restrict access to information on how their product works unless you're buying in volume. Why is it necessary to have layers of NDAs on a product datasheet? Many of the people who might write software to integrate with some hardware are not the people manufacturing high-volume products based on it! (See: Linux driver developers.)
- foldr 6y ago
  TI have some sweet analogue products with very high performance and (just as importantly) excellent documentation. For example I've been very happy with https://www.ti.com/product/TPS61098 https://www.ti.com/product/TPS61098 If you're not trying to shave every cent off BOM costs, it's worth paying a premium for high quality datasheets.
- bayindirh 6y ago
  > TI is now just rentseeking on their ananlog dominance and whatever sinking boat Intel is, TI is way worse. Burr Brown opamps and DSPs are enough to keep the legacy of TI alive. OMAPs are just DSPs with processor cores. They were not designed to be fast first.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  If they created that analog dominance, it’s hard for me to see that as rent-seeking. Cash cowing perhaps.
- BostonEnginerd 6y ago
  They made a conscious decision to focus their efforts on where they're able to be a leader. They saw early on that they couldn't compete in advanced logic with the Asian foundries without making astronomical investments -- so they decided to compete in a non-feature size dominated market.
- syshum 6y ago
  TI is about 10 years ahead of Intel, but rest assured we will be commenting on threads about Intel doing things like this in 10 years or less
redis_mlc 6y ago
I remember the "golden age" of chip makers in the 80s giving a bookshelf of datasheets to every engineer who asked. (At the time, if you mailed a circuit design to an inside rep, he would also mail you all the chips for free to build it, regardless of price.) Since then, some mfgs. have been restricting datasheets to avoid potential patent litigation. This might be the case here. Possibly another example of death by a thousand cuts as our society gets more regimented.
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  Computers in the 80s also came with schematics that showed users how to repair, modify and extend their system. I've seen videos of people hooking up their electronics projects to a C64.

ChuckNorris89 6y ago

That was clear when Nokia fell and took down TI's OMAP processors with them and they just gave up to Quallcomm's Snapdragon without even putting up a fight. TI is now just rentseeking on their ananlog dominance and whatever sinking boat Intel is, TI is way worse.

pjmlp 6y ago
Except Nokia is pretty much around, their business was more than just mobile phones, and happen to own Bell Labs nowadays.
- johnnycerberus 6y ago
  Nokia's Bell Labs is only focused on 5G and 6G technologies. I mean judging by the papers they release they are now a far cry from the wide research spectrum that they had before.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    The point being they still exist and focus on what is profitable.
alexhutcheson 6y ago
TI might not be focused on phones and multimedia devices anymore, but their DSP chips are extremely well regarded, and some of their other chips are popular for industrial automation. I don’t think “rentseeking on their analog dominance” is a fair characterization.
- cushychicken 6y ago
  It's hard not to view this sort of stuff as saber rattling (or, more accurately, whining) from the OSHW community. TI is more than happy to work with you on their most cutting edge designs if you're shipping in appreciable volume. Talking a quarter million chips or more per year. That's just the way the wind blows in their business. Gotta recoup as much R&D expenditure as possible up front. I've worked with them on these sorts of designs. They employ tons of really sharp engineers and still make lots of high quality, very useful chips. You just have to buy enough of them for it to be worth it for TI to work with you. No OSHW application I know of has ever moved enough units to cross this bar. Not even close.
  - snoopen 6y ago
    What makes you think it's the OSHW community? If TI will work with you only if you're high vol then I could see a lot of smaller businesses seeing this tactic working against them too.
    - cushychicken 6y ago
      In TI's eyes - that is, through the lens of order volume and support needed by the customer from TI - the difference between a single small business building HW and a single OSHW is negligible. They get way more ROI by heavily supporting bigCos who will give them millions of dollars of business YOY rather than helping a zillion mom and pop shops who can barely wire a resistor the right way. Think of it as a tacit strategy of "firing your worst customers". Having worked in bigCo vs small Co, there are a lot of small Co and OSHW EEs who barely have a clue what they're doing. It's not worth TI's time or money to help these people out. Upleveling lousy engineers thru support only to net them a 10 piece part order, is a really lousy ROI. (Unless of course we're talking an ASIC or some other astronomically high ROI custom piece. But, I'm assuming that we're not, because I don't work for a military prime contractor.)
  - ryukafalz 6y ago
    I can understand hardware vendors not actively working with you on designs unless you're buying in volume. That's fine, they're a business, they have to make money and not lose money. What I don't understand about the hardware industry is the extent to which they actively restrict access to information on how their product works unless you're buying in volume. Why is it necessary to have layers of NDAs on a product datasheet? Many of the people who might write software to integrate with some hardware are not the people manufacturing high-volume products based on it! (See: Linux driver developers.)
foldr 6y ago
TI have some sweet analogue products with very high performance and (just as importantly) excellent documentation. For example I've been very happy with https://www.ti.com/product/TPS61098 https://www.ti.com/product/TPS61098 If you're not trying to shave every cent off BOM costs, it's worth paying a premium for high quality datasheets.
bayindirh 6y ago
> TI is now just rentseeking on their ananlog dominance and whatever sinking boat Intel is, TI is way worse. Burr Brown opamps and DSPs are enough to keep the legacy of TI alive. OMAPs are just DSPs with processor cores. They were not designed to be fast first.
sokoloff 6y ago
If they created that analog dominance, it’s hard for me to see that as rent-seeking. Cash cowing perhaps.
BostonEnginerd 6y ago
They made a conscious decision to focus their efforts on where they're able to be a leader. They saw early on that they couldn't compete in advanced logic with the Asian foundries without making astronomical investments -- so they decided to compete in a non-feature size dominated market.
syshum 6y ago
TI is about 10 years ahead of Intel, but rest assured we will be commenting on threads about Intel doing things like this in 10 years or less

redis_mlc 6y ago

I remember the "golden age" of chip makers in the 80s giving a bookshelf of datasheets to every engineer who asked. (At the time, if you mailed a circuit design to an inside rep, he would also mail you all the chips for free to build it, regardless of price.) Since then, some mfgs. have been restricting datasheets to avoid potential patent litigation. This might be the case here. Possibly another example of death by a thousand cuts as our society gets more regimented.

matheusmoreira 6y ago
Computers in the 80s also came with schematics that showed users how to repair, modify and extend their system. I've seen videos of people hooking up their electronics projects to a C64.