4 ms·

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

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.)
  - inetknght 6y ago
    > I can understand hardware vendors not actively working with you on designs unless you're buying in volume. I also understand. But in some ways I disagree: set a higher price instead. Let me, the customer, decide if the price is too high.
  - spaetzleesser 6y ago
    That’s always weird to me. Other companies do the same by hiding specs and documentation from people who aren’t paying big money. I always thought it was supposed to be better to spread your information as widely as possible so people can familiarize themselves with your product resulting in potential future sales.
    - cushychicken 6y ago
      I always thought it was supposed to be better to spread your information as widely as possible so people can familiarize themselves with your product resulting in potential future sales. That makes a lot of sense - if you're building a software platform. If you're building a chip, it makes sense to be the first mover on the cutting edge. By obscuring specs, your competitors won't know what specs are the most valuable to your customers. That sort of thing is critically important to semiconductor business.
  - cushychicken 6y ago
    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! Because obscuring the use case and the customer of a cutting edge chip is a semiconductor company's most reasonable moat these days. If you telegraph what big customers are buying by freely sharing your most cutting edge product portfolio, someone else will copy it. (Probably someone in China with a hefty dose of subsidy from the gov't.) Classic case of "Your margin is my opportunity." ADI or On Semi can, and will, catch TI after 18-36 months of development effort. The longer TI can keep them off their tail by making it hard to see what customers are buying, the more profit they can make without a reasonable competitor on the market. Software is a commodity that TI distributes as a compliment to the thing that actually makes them money, which is selling chips. For analog circuits, this is completely irrelevant, and doesn't affect their operating procedure. For processors and peripherals that require drivers, it's a cost of doing business for them - not an enabling feature.

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.)
- inetknght 6y ago
  > I can understand hardware vendors not actively working with you on designs unless you're buying in volume. I also understand. But in some ways I disagree: set a higher price instead. Let me, the customer, decide if the price is too high.
- spaetzleesser 6y ago
  That’s always weird to me. Other companies do the same by hiding specs and documentation from people who aren’t paying big money. I always thought it was supposed to be better to spread your information as widely as possible so people can familiarize themselves with your product resulting in potential future sales.
  - cushychicken 6y ago
    I always thought it was supposed to be better to spread your information as widely as possible so people can familiarize themselves with your product resulting in potential future sales. That makes a lot of sense - if you're building a software platform. If you're building a chip, it makes sense to be the first mover on the cutting edge. By obscuring specs, your competitors won't know what specs are the most valuable to your customers. That sort of thing is critically important to semiconductor business.
- cushychicken 6y ago
  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! Because obscuring the use case and the customer of a cutting edge chip is a semiconductor company's most reasonable moat these days. If you telegraph what big customers are buying by freely sharing your most cutting edge product portfolio, someone else will copy it. (Probably someone in China with a hefty dose of subsidy from the gov't.) Classic case of "Your margin is my opportunity." ADI or On Semi can, and will, catch TI after 18-36 months of development effort. The longer TI can keep them off their tail by making it hard to see what customers are buying, the more profit they can make without a reasonable competitor on the market. Software is a commodity that TI distributes as a compliment to the thing that actually makes them money, which is selling chips. For analog circuits, this is completely irrelevant, and doesn't affect their operating procedure. For processors and peripherals that require drivers, it's a cost of doing business for them - not an enabling feature.