5 ms·

Agreed. That could be a dev board (seems pretty dishonest though). I was thinking it might be advertising. Lots of devboard companies do this - sell advertising

Agreed. That could be a dev board (seems pretty dishonest though). I was thinking it might be advertising. Lots of devboard companies do this - sell advertising space on the silkscreen to supplement their income on each unit (see digilentinc.com who does this a TON). the $25 price point is out of the question unless: A) They sell at or VERY near cost B) They sell advertising on the PCB C) They are subsidized by a tech vendor selling them parts at a discount D) They are subsidized by a charity or an angel E) They are planning on making 100,000 units in one shot. At least SEVERAL of the above have to be true, or the $25 is just made-up nonsense.

icebraining 15y ago
They say in the blog of the project that the model with Ethernet and 2 USB ports is $35. The pictures are probably from that model, not from the $25 one.
- poslathian 15y ago
  Even so, I cant find an ARM11 chip for less than 10$ on octopart, and in the 700MHz range its more like 20-30$ just for 1 chip. For qty purchases that can come down to 7.50, but thats being REALLY generous. I have trouble believing they can buy a 700MHz (unspecified on their materials and I couldnt get it off their snapshot either) for less than 15$. The headers and other plastic is at LEAST 4$, USB connectors alone are almost 1$ in qty 5000. Add in the passives and other junk, and leave out the ethernet module and we are talking about a bill of materials of close to $20. Now add 1.75 for the PCB (qty 5000), 2.50$ for assembly, another $2.00 for testing, packaging and assorted costs (like shipping raw materials and finished goods to and from china, since US assembly and PCB costs are at least 3 times what I noted) and the bare per-unit cost is $25. Dont forget to factor in costs like - uhh - keeping the lights on in their officepartment - and even if their dev time is free they just cant sell that product for $25 without outside cash subsidizing the whole thing. In this business, distributors pretty much demand the product at 25-40% discount, so if they want to be in shops and catalogs, you have to factor that in as well. Consider the raw cost per arduino is probably around 10.50$, they sell 100,000 units a year, and their onboard processor is about 1$ and they have less overall plastic, passives, and other overhead parts than this thing.
  - joezydeco 15y ago
    From reading more into the project, it sure looks like Broadcom is giving this group a significant helping hand. Given that Eben Upton is currently a technical director at Broadcom while simultaneously working on this Raspberry Pi project...maybe I'm not so shocked anymore. It's actually refreshing to see chipmakers put out cheaper EVKs to play with instead of $4000 development systems. It's good marketing. I'd single out TI as the largest culprit of making EVKs hard to get, but I'm also inclined to believe they've been giving Beagleboard/Pandaboard a helping hand (like where can you find loose OMAP4s on the market? I sure can't.)
    - ReadEvalPost 15y ago
      Maybe so for their higher end boards, but TI supplies the cheapest eval kit I know of at $4.30[1] for the MSP430 Launchpad. [1] https://estore.ti.com/MSP-EXP430G2-MSP430-LaunchPad-Value-Line-Development-kit-P2031.aspx https://estore.ti.com/MSP-EXP430G2-MSP430-LaunchPad-Value-Li...
      - keenerd 15y ago
        Those don't count. TI is giving away those boards at a loss. TI likes to give away parts. The $4.30 is entirely (overnight!) shipping.
    - anc2020 15y ago
      Last login: Fri Aug 5 18:11:19 UTC 2011 from dc4-arm-01.cam.broadcom.com on pts/0 http://www.raspberrypi.org/?p=78#more-78 http://www.raspberrypi.org/?p=78#more-78
    - theatrus2 15y ago
      Broadcom would generally win on making hard to get EVKs. You can't even get data sheets unless you're a direct 100k unit type of customer. TI will sample to just about anyone. Note that the OMAPs are trickier as they expose their memory bus above the chip - the SDRAM and NAND are mounted on top of the main die as a stacked BGA. This isn't easy to work with.

icebraining 15y ago

They say in the blog of the project that the model with Ethernet and 2 USB ports is $35. The pictures are probably from that model, not from the $25 one.

poslathian 15y ago
Even so, I cant find an ARM11 chip for less than 10$ on octopart, and in the 700MHz range its more like 20-30$ just for 1 chip. For qty purchases that can come down to 7.50, but thats being REALLY generous. I have trouble believing they can buy a 700MHz (unspecified on their materials and I couldnt get it off their snapshot either) for less than 15$. The headers and other plastic is at LEAST 4$, USB connectors alone are almost 1$ in qty 5000. Add in the passives and other junk, and leave out the ethernet module and we are talking about a bill of materials of close to $20. Now add 1.75 for the PCB (qty 5000), 2.50$ for assembly, another $2.00 for testing, packaging and assorted costs (like shipping raw materials and finished goods to and from china, since US assembly and PCB costs are at least 3 times what I noted) and the bare per-unit cost is $25. Dont forget to factor in costs like - uhh - keeping the lights on in their officepartment - and even if their dev time is free they just cant sell that product for $25 without outside cash subsidizing the whole thing. In this business, distributors pretty much demand the product at 25-40% discount, so if they want to be in shops and catalogs, you have to factor that in as well. Consider the raw cost per arduino is probably around 10.50$, they sell 100,000 units a year, and their onboard processor is about 1$ and they have less overall plastic, passives, and other overhead parts than this thing.
- joezydeco 15y ago
  From reading more into the project, it sure looks like Broadcom is giving this group a significant helping hand. Given that Eben Upton is currently a technical director at Broadcom while simultaneously working on this Raspberry Pi project...maybe I'm not so shocked anymore. It's actually refreshing to see chipmakers put out cheaper EVKs to play with instead of $4000 development systems. It's good marketing. I'd single out TI as the largest culprit of making EVKs hard to get, but I'm also inclined to believe they've been giving Beagleboard/Pandaboard a helping hand (like where can you find loose OMAP4s on the market? I sure can't.)
  - ReadEvalPost 15y ago
    Maybe so for their higher end boards, but TI supplies the cheapest eval kit I know of at $4.30[1] for the MSP430 Launchpad. [1] https://estore.ti.com/MSP-EXP430G2-MSP430-LaunchPad-Value-Line-Development-kit-P2031.aspx https://estore.ti.com/MSP-EXP430G2-MSP430-LaunchPad-Value-Li...
    - keenerd 15y ago
      Those don't count. TI is giving away those boards at a loss. TI likes to give away parts. The $4.30 is entirely (overnight!) shipping.
  - anc2020 15y ago
    Last login: Fri Aug 5 18:11:19 UTC 2011 from dc4-arm-01.cam.broadcom.com on pts/0 http://www.raspberrypi.org/?p=78#more-78 http://www.raspberrypi.org/?p=78#more-78
  - theatrus2 15y ago
    Broadcom would generally win on making hard to get EVKs. You can't even get data sheets unless you're a direct 100k unit type of customer. TI will sample to just about anyone. Note that the OMAPs are trickier as they expose their memory bus above the chip - the SDRAM and NAND are mounted on top of the main die as a stacked BGA. This isn't easy to work with.