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I bet that is just a matter of multinationals not wanting to bother with tiny startups. Unless you are ordering hundreds of thousands of chips, they are not eve
by crote 3y ago
I bet that is just a matter of multinationals not wanting to bother with tiny startups. Unless you are ordering hundreds of thousands of chips, they are not even going to respond to your emails.
You just aren't worth their time, so they except you to stick to public documentation, buy their dev kit, and figure out out on your own. Want to use a part without public documentation? Tough luck!
- nomilk 3y agoI have no idea if it's a lot or not, but for reference, Comma's initial (trial) order was for 10k chips.
- pclmulqdq 3y agoThat's very small for an automotive product, particularly when you don't have a much bigger follow-up order on your timeline. Around million units is the normal volume, and it's where companies like Qualcomm will start to talk to you. Many companies are a lot more friendly to small customers, though.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>That's very small for an automotive product Also automotive customers tend to stick with their long term partners. It's why Renesas, Infineon and NXP(former Freescale) own the automotive MCU market. Once you heavily invest in the ecosystem and buy all the tooling, compilers, debuggers, JTAG trace probes, and your workforce is already accustomed to all the pitfalls and workarounds of an architecture, it's too expensive too switch to a different provider.
- szundi 3y agoThat’s nothing in automotive
- crote 3y agoThat's pretty much an overgrown hobbyist project to them. Chips are usually sold in reels of 1k or 3k. For quantities like 10k chip vendors will just redirect you to a distributor like Mouser or Digikey - who will be able to ship an order of 150k to you next-business-day without any issues. The problems start when the chips you want aren't redistributed. You're a rounding error to the manufacturer. Why spend the time and effort assisting a startup with a one-off 10k order when the next email is from a large car manufacturer placing a guaranteed 15M order?
- civilitty 3y agoQualcomm is especially awful to deal with. Even as a high volume customer getting anything from them (including chip errata!) was like pulling teeth.
- aborsy 3y agoI hear Qualcomm also doesn’t pay its engineers well. I wonder if that’s true. I certainly see Qualcomm engineers frequently leave and transition to FANG.
- hashtag-til 3y agoYes it is. I have quite a few friends working for them in the UK. Also quite a toxic office environment.
- lnsru 3y agoSalary in Germany is good compared to regular automotive companies because Qualcomm has this nice stock bonus. Environment is rather toxic. The salary does not compensate that.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago> Environment is rather toxic. The salary does not compensate that. Same with NXP. Salaries and bonuses are very good(by European standards, ignore FAANG wages) but the overtime, work pressure and workplace toxicity makes that a difficult proposition if you can't stomach the ascension to the level where the REAL money starts to come in. There are indeed people at these big semi companies who can slack off and collect huge paychecks but those are the exception, as some people in the trenches are burning the candle on both ends to make the deadlines of masks reaching the fabs on time.
- aborsy 3y agoCan you mention examples of toxic practices to better see the situation?