5 ms·

Could anyone familiar with the project reveal what kind of volumes are we talking about? E.g. nvidia's web page says that the minimum is 100,000 units. It kind

by exDM69 13y ago

Could anyone familiar with the project reveal what kind of volumes are we talking about? E.g. nvidia's web page says that the minimum is 100,000 units. It kinda makes sense not to sell these in small quantities because the SoC manufacturer would either end up getting lots of support requests or they would get a bad reputation for ignoring support. The reason is that unlike in the x86 world where there's some kind of a "standard" (derived from the IBM PC), ARM SoCs don't have any kind of consistent ecosystem where the motherboard components, firmware, etc would be specified. Every ARM SoC boots in a different manner, they might have separate bootloaders and there's a whole lot of SoC specific code in the Linux kernel. Of course, the SoC manufacturer might be able to release documentation about the chip, but that kind of documentation might not exist (in a neat package that can actually be released and not e.g. an intranet wiki), it might contain sensitive IP (lawyers would have to get involved) or it might be written in a foreign language (and translating technical documentation from Chinese or Korean is not cheap either). For the industry to mature and move forward, a common standard for SoCs would be a very welcome development. Disclosure: I work as a SW engineer in a SoC company but I have no connection to the sales department and don't really know how this works in practice.

ekianjo 13y ago
This is a small project, and the first production runs would probably only be in the thousands of units.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  Let me revise my statement: actually in the 10ks of units.
fit2rule 13y ago
I've been a backer/supporter/follower of the Pandora project since the very early days. What I have to say is not official - but to answer your question the impression that I have is that the volume is literally in the 10k - 20k. The reason is of course economy - this is a hardware startup, and the funding is not nearly at the levels to support 100k quantities. This is a real shame in the SoC market right now - so many great products could be being made if only the chip mfr's were paying attention to the little guys. Its why companies like ACME Systems (http://www.acmesystems.it/ http://www.acmesystems.it/) are working hard on providing SoC's and SoM's to the little guys - for a fair price - but its also why they have a fixed-price policy (no matter what quantity: the same price.) This has the advantage (for the hardware developers) of having access to the chips in small quantities, but it eats the margins when the quantities get larger (>10k), because the price will be the same. This is an area where a new startup could really come along and eat everyones' lunch. Ignoring the little guys is going to hurt the Samsung and Nvidia's of this market, but I suppose they know that already and its why they price/set policy that will exclude newcomers to the scene ..
- exDM69 13y ago
  My personal opinion is that the SoC business is stuck in a chicken and egg scenario where there will be no sense to sell to small players because there's no common ecosystem to leverage (and thus SoC sales will come with heavy support costs) but there's no incentive to create a PC-like standard since it is not a commodity market like x86 chips and motherboards are. Currently selling a small batch of chips (even individual ones) to someone makes no sense because the customer would be unable to do anything with the chip simply because they wouldn't know how it works without support or documentation (which costs money to create and maintain). The small players market (all of them, combined) is not worth enough money to put the effort in. We can argue about the PR value (among geeks) but that's not deemed valuable by management at this point. It's certainly not about ignoring or setting price points to exclude little guys, it's about running a business for profit. If and when we get some kind of a standard for SoCs and it becomes viable that you can build a motherboard and put any ARM SoC in it, it will also become sensible to sell them like commodity products but the industry as a whole is not at that stage. As there is very fierce competition among the individual SoC manufacturers and very little co-operation takes place, I think that ARMH is pretty much the only ones in the position to make any such development. I don't like the way the industry works at the moment but that's just the way it is. Maybe it will some day mature and stabilize.

by exDM69 13y ago

ekianjo 13y ago

This is a small project, and the first production runs would probably only be in the thousands of units.

ekianjo 13y ago
Let me revise my statement: actually in the 10ks of units.

fit2rule 13y ago

I've been a backer/supporter/follower of the Pandora project since the very early days. What I have to say is not official - but to answer your question the impression that I have is that the volume is literally in the 10k - 20k. The reason is of course economy - this is a hardware startup, and the funding is not nearly at the levels to support 100k quantities. This is a real shame in the SoC market right now - so many great products could be being made if only the chip mfr's were paying attention to the little guys. Its why companies like ACME Systems (http://www.acmesystems.it/ http://www.acmesystems.it/) are working hard on providing SoC's and SoM's to the little guys - for a fair price - but its also why they have a fixed-price policy (no matter what quantity: the same price.) This has the advantage (for the hardware developers) of having access to the chips in small quantities, but it eats the margins when the quantities get larger (>10k), because the price will be the same. This is an area where a new startup could really come along and eat everyones' lunch. Ignoring the little guys is going to hurt the Samsung and Nvidia's of this market, but I suppose they know that already and its why they price/set policy that will exclude newcomers to the scene ..

exDM69 13y ago
My personal opinion is that the SoC business is stuck in a chicken and egg scenario where there will be no sense to sell to small players because there's no common ecosystem to leverage (and thus SoC sales will come with heavy support costs) but there's no incentive to create a PC-like standard since it is not a commodity market like x86 chips and motherboards are. Currently selling a small batch of chips (even individual ones) to someone makes no sense because the customer would be unable to do anything with the chip simply because they wouldn't know how it works without support or documentation (which costs money to create and maintain). The small players market (all of them, combined) is not worth enough money to put the effort in. We can argue about the PR value (among geeks) but that's not deemed valuable by management at this point. It's certainly not about ignoring or setting price points to exclude little guys, it's about running a business for profit. If and when we get some kind of a standard for SoCs and it becomes viable that you can build a motherboard and put any ARM SoC in it, it will also become sensible to sell them like commodity products but the industry as a whole is not at that stage. As there is very fierce competition among the individual SoC manufacturers and very little co-operation takes place, I think that ARMH is pretty much the only ones in the position to make any such development. I don't like the way the industry works at the moment but that's just the way it is. Maybe it will some day mature and stabilize.