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I don’t understand why chipmakers seem to always restrict access to documentation on chips. Their competitors will get it anyway. This only creates more problem

I don’t understand why chipmakers seem to always restrict access to documentation on chips. Their competitors will get it anyway. This only creates more problems for small developers.

b1ackb0x 6y ago
Last time I had to find in-depth documentation on a fairly common and new SONY image sensor, there was nothing available officially, found it in some chinese file sharing site though. Seems like they are shooting themselves in the foot by not opening it.
- varispeed 6y ago
  I think this may be some bigger market fixing situation - only big and already established corporations would get documentation preventing any competition to emerge.
  - b1ackb0x 6y ago
    They could easily control it by selling chips to big players only if they want.
    - BrianOnHN 6y ago
      Too conspicuous
    - varispeed 6y ago
      I am not sure if that would be legal. Many countries have provisions against market fixing.
blowfish721 6y ago
Could it be a legacy culture thing? If you’ve ever dealt with traditional broadcast vendors it’s the same thing there, impossible to get even basic documentation and manuals without having an authorized account in most cases. Really is frustrating when you try to shop around for a new setup and all you can get is marketing material.
- canofbars 6y ago
  Most likely. The open source movement in software was still relatively recently and quite radical. The hardware companies are still stuck way in the past.
  - PoachedSausage 6y ago
    >The hardware companies are still stuck way in the past. If only. In the past it was common to provide schematics of your hardware in order that people could repair it. This was common for consumer products, industrial, instrumentation, test gear, almost everything. For example, the manual for the Amiga 500 had the schematics in it.
    - diggan 6y ago
      Also "hardware companies are still stuck way in the past" is only true for some hardware companies. Recently got into music production and lots of hardware comes with schematics of the inner workings with descriptions on how it all works and is connected, together with implementation guides for MIDI and more. Night and day if you compare to how computer hardware gets sold today.
      - zwog 6y ago
        I don't know if this is only with music hardware or with 'professional' hardware in general, but yeah you get a lot of schematics and such. While I was at University I made some money by repairing DJ-hardware. Controllers, CD-Players and Turntables. There things are often expensive, but they are quite easy to repair because there are detailed service manuals available. Not on the official sites, though.
  - FpUser 6y ago
    >"The hardware companies are still stuck way in the past." Example: in the past my friend bought Moog Prodigy synthesizer and along with everything it also came with all the electronic circuitry diagrams. Good luck finding anything like this with the modern hardware.
varispeed 6y ago
It is to create barriers to entry where possible. If you are rent-seeking greedy co, then why would you give away useful knowledge, not to mention for free? Also good documentation could make you create a replacement product or have better understanding what to look for in a substitute.
- b1ackb0x 6y ago
  Not really, they are only making it less likely that we use their chip in our product because we never tested it and can’t make a prototype with it.
  - varispeed 6y ago
    I think that was my point. Smaller companies will not use these chips, but big co will have all the documentation they need.
ballenf 6y ago
Stabbing a bit in the dark, but maybe TI wants to prevent a competitor from being to say "we didn't steal anything from you, we got all this info from sites that you were perfectly happy to let continue to operate freely". The legal departments within companies have very, very different measures of success than that of just about anyone else. If you have weak company leadership, legal will start to drive policy more than it should.
- minimuffins 6y ago
  > If you have weak company leadership, legal will start to drive policy more than it should. That's a really interesting dynamic I have never experienced or heard of. Explains a lot! Do you know other examples? (ed. clarify which part I wanted examples for)
  - 10000truths 6y ago
    Oracle is the example.
cushychicken 6y ago
Because in semiconductor business land, not showing what your most cutting edge products are, and who's buying them, helps you develop business opportunities and product lines several years ahead of your competitors. It's a very different game than Intel's business model, which depended on a pure performance play and being 18-36 months ahead of all competitors tech wise. TI's strategy requires way more customer contact and development, because analog applications are so much more specific.
segfaultbuserr 6y ago
> This only creates more problems for small developers. This is exactly why: to stop small developers from buying them. There are three types of components in the electronics world to my observation. 1. Components for the general public (e.g. opamps, microcontrollers, power supply controllers) - the datasheets are publicly available. This is probably 70% of the marketplace. 2. Components for the OEM - Some components are only meant to be sold to OEMs in huge quantity. For example, a company may sell $1 LCD controllers, if such a company is only interested in selling to huge manufacturers for big money, they often classify their datasheets as "confidential" - it's a joke, the only purpose is stop small developers from wasting their time. Whether it's a Type-2 part heavily depends on the company. For example, a big U.S. semiconductor company may sell it to the general public, but a cheap Taiwanese vendor often classifies all the information as confidential. 3. Security through obscurity. If the chip contains unique or advanced technology, for example, the latest generation of NAND flash or SoC, the datasheet is classified to make it more difficult for other people to do market research. Similarly, the payment card and consumer DRM vendors essentially own the security chip industry, selling channels of the chip and availability of the datasheets are tightly controlled. Type-2 and Type-3 are responsible for the most frustrating experience. If you are an independent kernel hacker who wants to port Linux to a new gadget, not being able to get the datasheet of the $1 LCD controller because it's "confidential" is a real headache. But as I mentioned previously, Type-2 chips are not really secret - the confidentiality is only meant to stop small developers from bothering them. Thus, the chips themselves can usually be found for sale on the Shenzhen electronics marketplace, and it's often possible to find numerous leaked datasheets on the web. You can also reverse engineer consumer gadgets as a reference design. For example, Realtek Ethernet controllers, 100% of the public datasheets are leaked by insiders. If it's not, sometimes getting the datasheet may be possible you do some social engineering, "we are prototyping a new product based on the LCD controller chip, now our problem is register xxh..." On the other hand, if it's Type-3, don't even think about it. The vast majority of products by TI are Type-I: Usually all technical documentation is provided on the website, with schematics, PCB layouts, and reference designs (unless it's a specialized chip for a particular application). I recently used a TI chip in my design just because of the availability of documentation. > Here is TI DMCAing a bunch of random datasheets. Completely jellybean stuff like 555s, 74xx logic, and op-amps. Nope nope nope nope. This is crazy. These chips don't even belong to the Type-2 category. It's unreasonable to send DMCA takedown notices in terms of security-through-obscurity. The only explanation I can see is TI's overzealous corporate policies.
finiteloops 6y ago
In addition to the other answers, it is also a cheap way to do inbound sales. I've seen OSS downloads utilize this for the same reason.

I don’t understand why chipmakers seem to always restrict access to documentation on chips. Their competitors will get it anyway. This only creates more problems for small developers.

b1ackb0x 6y ago

Last time I had to find in-depth documentation on a fairly common and new SONY image sensor, there was nothing available officially, found it in some chinese file sharing site though. Seems like they are shooting themselves in the foot by not opening it.

varispeed 6y ago
I think this may be some bigger market fixing situation - only big and already established corporations would get documentation preventing any competition to emerge.
- b1ackb0x 6y ago
  They could easily control it by selling chips to big players only if they want.
  - BrianOnHN 6y ago
    Too conspicuous
  - varispeed 6y ago
    I am not sure if that would be legal. Many countries have provisions against market fixing.

blowfish721 6y ago

Could it be a legacy culture thing? If you’ve ever dealt with traditional broadcast vendors it’s the same thing there, impossible to get even basic documentation and manuals without having an authorized account in most cases. Really is frustrating when you try to shop around for a new setup and all you can get is marketing material.

canofbars 6y ago
Most likely. The open source movement in software was still relatively recently and quite radical. The hardware companies are still stuck way in the past.
- PoachedSausage 6y ago
  >The hardware companies are still stuck way in the past. If only. In the past it was common to provide schematics of your hardware in order that people could repair it. This was common for consumer products, industrial, instrumentation, test gear, almost everything. For example, the manual for the Amiga 500 had the schematics in it.
  - diggan 6y ago
    Also "hardware companies are still stuck way in the past" is only true for some hardware companies. Recently got into music production and lots of hardware comes with schematics of the inner workings with descriptions on how it all works and is connected, together with implementation guides for MIDI and more. Night and day if you compare to how computer hardware gets sold today.
    - zwog 6y ago
      I don't know if this is only with music hardware or with 'professional' hardware in general, but yeah you get a lot of schematics and such. While I was at University I made some money by repairing DJ-hardware. Controllers, CD-Players and Turntables. There things are often expensive, but they are quite easy to repair because there are detailed service manuals available. Not on the official sites, though.
- FpUser 6y ago
  >"The hardware companies are still stuck way in the past." Example: in the past my friend bought Moog Prodigy synthesizer and along with everything it also came with all the electronic circuitry diagrams. Good luck finding anything like this with the modern hardware.

varispeed 6y ago

It is to create barriers to entry where possible. If you are rent-seeking greedy co, then why would you give away useful knowledge, not to mention for free? Also good documentation could make you create a replacement product or have better understanding what to look for in a substitute.

b1ackb0x 6y ago
Not really, they are only making it less likely that we use their chip in our product because we never tested it and can’t make a prototype with it.
- varispeed 6y ago
  I think that was my point. Smaller companies will not use these chips, but big co will have all the documentation they need.

ballenf 6y ago

Stabbing a bit in the dark, but maybe TI wants to prevent a competitor from being to say "we didn't steal anything from you, we got all this info from sites that you were perfectly happy to let continue to operate freely". The legal departments within companies have very, very different measures of success than that of just about anyone else. If you have weak company leadership, legal will start to drive policy more than it should.

minimuffins 6y ago
> If you have weak company leadership, legal will start to drive policy more than it should. That's a really interesting dynamic I have never experienced or heard of. Explains a lot! Do you know other examples? (ed. clarify which part I wanted examples for)
- 10000truths 6y ago
  Oracle is the example.

cushychicken 6y ago

Because in semiconductor business land, not showing what your most cutting edge products are, and who's buying them, helps you develop business opportunities and product lines several years ahead of your competitors. It's a very different game than Intel's business model, which depended on a pure performance play and being 18-36 months ahead of all competitors tech wise. TI's strategy requires way more customer contact and development, because analog applications are so much more specific.

segfaultbuserr 6y ago

> This only creates more problems for small developers. This is exactly why: to stop small developers from buying them. There are three types of components in the electronics world to my observation. 1. Components for the general public (e.g. opamps, microcontrollers, power supply controllers) - the datasheets are publicly available. This is probably 70% of the marketplace. 2. Components for the OEM - Some components are only meant to be sold to OEMs in huge quantity. For example, a company may sell $1 LCD controllers, if such a company is only interested in selling to huge manufacturers for big money, they often classify their datasheets as "confidential" - it's a joke, the only purpose is stop small developers from wasting their time. Whether it's a Type-2 part heavily depends on the company. For example, a big U.S. semiconductor company may sell it to the general public, but a cheap Taiwanese vendor often classifies all the information as confidential. 3. Security through obscurity. If the chip contains unique or advanced technology, for example, the latest generation of NAND flash or SoC, the datasheet is classified to make it more difficult for other people to do market research. Similarly, the payment card and consumer DRM vendors essentially own the security chip industry, selling channels of the chip and availability of the datasheets are tightly controlled. Type-2 and Type-3 are responsible for the most frustrating experience. If you are an independent kernel hacker who wants to port Linux to a new gadget, not being able to get the datasheet of the $1 LCD controller because it's "confidential" is a real headache. But as I mentioned previously, Type-2 chips are not really secret - the confidentiality is only meant to stop small developers from bothering them. Thus, the chips themselves can usually be found for sale on the Shenzhen electronics marketplace, and it's often possible to find numerous leaked datasheets on the web. You can also reverse engineer consumer gadgets as a reference design. For example, Realtek Ethernet controllers, 100% of the public datasheets are leaked by insiders. If it's not, sometimes getting the datasheet may be possible you do some social engineering, "we are prototyping a new product based on the LCD controller chip, now our problem is register xxh..." On the other hand, if it's Type-3, don't even think about it. The vast majority of products by TI are Type-I: Usually all technical documentation is provided on the website, with schematics, PCB layouts, and reference designs (unless it's a specialized chip for a particular application). I recently used a TI chip in my design just because of the availability of documentation. > Here is TI DMCAing a bunch of random datasheets. Completely jellybean stuff like 555s, 74xx logic, and op-amps. Nope nope nope nope. This is crazy. These chips don't even belong to the Type-2 category. It's unreasonable to send DMCA takedown notices in terms of security-through-obscurity. The only explanation I can see is TI's overzealous corporate policies.

finiteloops 6y ago

In addition to the other answers, it is also a cheap way to do inbound sales. I've seen OSS downloads utilize this for the same reason.