4 ms·

How does it benefit Intel to keep reference designs confidential?

• wildzzz 5y ago
  Because they only give you the design if you plan to buy a bunch of chips and pay them for support. It's a way to make money. Additionally, keeping the reference design under NDA reduces the risk of someone building an chip that is drop in compatible with Intel boards.
• zargon 5y ago
  Intel is super secretive about everything, just because.
  • userbinator 5y ago
    They used to be far more open; I guess that was before the lawyers and manager-types started taking over the company. Here's the famous 440BX reference schematics: https://web.archive.org/web/19991010005207/http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/designex/BXDPDG10.htm https://web.archive.org/web/19991010005207/http://www.intel.... Here are all of them, it looks like they started being closed with the 900 series chipsets; the 800 series (P4 era) were the last ones they offered plenty of documentation openly: https://web.archive.org/web/20040823181302/http://developer.intel.com/design/chipsets/schematics/ https://web.archive.org/web/20040823181302/http://developer....
• mschuster91 5y ago
  Keep data sheets and reference designs confidential and your only customers will be large-volume companies able to shell out serious dollars upfront and with enough competent staff on hand. Hobbyists and small shops who require more assistance in getting up to speed are left to the scraps that the Raspberry Pi Foundation throws at us. Sorry for the sarcasm, but the situation really REALLY sucks and no one seems to care about it.