5 ms·
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
by 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 agoFrom 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 agoMaybe 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 agoThose don't count. TI is giving away those boards at a loss. TI likes to give away parts. The $4.30 is entirely (overnight!) shipping.
- anc2020 15y agoLast login: Fri Aug 5 18:11:19 UTC 2011 from dc4-arm-01.cam.broadcom.com on pts/0 http://www.raspberrypi.org/?p=78#more-78 http://www.raspberrypi.org/?p=78#more-78
- theatrus2 15y agoBroadcom would generally win on making hard to get EVKs. You can't even get data sheets unless you're a direct 100k unit type of customer. TI will sample to just about anyone. Note that the OMAPs are trickier as they expose their memory bus above the chip - the SDRAM and NAND are mounted on top of the main die as a stacked BGA. This isn't easy to work with.
- joezydeco 15y agoOMAPs are a godsend compared to Freescale i.MX. They still have pages and pages of design rules in their TRM about how to lay out the RAM busses. In fact I had Freescale recommend that I just cut-and-paste their reference design because they couldn't guarantee anyone else's design would ever work.
- keenerd 15y ago> USB connectors alone are almost 1$ in qty 5000 Really? They are 40 cents, in quantities of 1. From Jameco, who are not known for their low prices. [1] Your $4 for headers is bunk of a similar magnitude. > I cant find an ARM11 chip for less than 10$ on octopart This is true, but 500MHz Arm11 chips are only $11 in reasonably small numbers. [2] I wish I was your supplier - you are putting their kids through college. [1] http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10001_10001_2096181_-1 http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_1000... [2] http://search.digikey.com/scripts/dksearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=MCIMX353DVM5B-ND http://search.digikey.com/scripts/dksearch/dksus.dll?Detail&...
- poslathian 15y agohah. Yea I think perhaps I was a bit hot on those estimates. Its neat vendors practically give away some of these eval kits for marketing (which is almost certainly what this is, guised under a charity...), but it makes life awfully hard for me when clients now expect their 5000 unit run ARMx single board computer should cost about 15$ a pop (totally unachievable) plus engineering. I still hold on to my conclusions. Without breaking down everything piece by piece, we spend about 3.00$ in plastic and other headers on a medium qty design that looks about comparable to what theyre doing (i/o wise). Also, female 1/10" headers are quite a bit more expensive than male, which I think skewed my intuition a bit.