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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 mo

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.
- welterde 6y ago
  Don't you loose out on potential customers though? Since they will also be unaware it exists.
  - dbuder 6y ago
    The big customers are the only ones who matter. They are all like this. The DMCA would have been the pearl clutching lawyers. I used to think it was short sighted but I'm not so sure anymore, I think they could all be better to their customers and their firmware examples etc could be multiple orders of magnitude better and it wouldn't hurt the bottom line.
- ryukafalz 6y ago
  >Software is a commodity that TI distributes as a compliment to the thing that actually makes them money, which is selling chips. ... For processors and peripherals that require drivers, it's a cost of doing business for them - not an enabling feature. It's a cost of doing business that would be ameliorated by telling people how to use the product, because then they're not the only ones able to do the work. I'll use Linux drivers again as an example: I can only imagine the money it must cost for these SoC manufacturers to keep their kernel forks with binary blob drivers up to date with mainline Linux, and the security vulnerabilities that go unpatched in their products when they don't. That's money that Intel and AMD just don't have to spend; they contribute to the kernel, yes, but they're far from the only ones doing the work.
jrockway 6y ago
The datasheets are under NDA because they give each volume customer a different datasheet. You go to a sales call and say you want X, and then their engineering department prepares a datasheet saying that their product supports X. (Obviously the hardware supports X, but it may be kind of broken, so it's easier to tell customers that don't ask for it by name that it's not there.)
- cushychicken 6y ago
  An excellent point. Alternatively, some customer pays an absurd amount of money to add Function X to the chip, and pays a premium to be the only customer who can use Function X.

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.

welterde 6y ago
Don't you loose out on potential customers though? Since they will also be unaware it exists.
- dbuder 6y ago
  The big customers are the only ones who matter. They are all like this. The DMCA would have been the pearl clutching lawyers. I used to think it was short sighted but I'm not so sure anymore, I think they could all be better to their customers and their firmware examples etc could be multiple orders of magnitude better and it wouldn't hurt the bottom line.
ryukafalz 6y ago
>Software is a commodity that TI distributes as a compliment to the thing that actually makes them money, which is selling chips. ... For processors and peripherals that require drivers, it's a cost of doing business for them - not an enabling feature. It's a cost of doing business that would be ameliorated by telling people how to use the product, because then they're not the only ones able to do the work. I'll use Linux drivers again as an example: I can only imagine the money it must cost for these SoC manufacturers to keep their kernel forks with binary blob drivers up to date with mainline Linux, and the security vulnerabilities that go unpatched in their products when they don't. That's money that Intel and AMD just don't have to spend; they contribute to the kernel, yes, but they're far from the only ones doing the work.

jrockway 6y ago

The datasheets are under NDA because they give each volume customer a different datasheet. You go to a sales call and say you want X, and then their engineering department prepares a datasheet saying that their product supports X. (Obviously the hardware supports X, but it may be kind of broken, so it's easier to tell customers that don't ask for it by name that it's not there.)

cushychicken 6y ago
An excellent point. Alternatively, some customer pays an absurd amount of money to add Function X to the chip, and pays a premium to be the only customer who can use Function X.