6 ms·

I wonder how this will affect the Raspberry Pi foundation. They use Broadcom SoCs and seem to have a pretty good relationship with them.

vvanders 11y ago
Yeah, that's because the founder works for BC. I had the exact same though, I guess time will tell.
astrodust 11y ago
The good news is they're not stuck with a single vendor, they could theoretically go to any company with an ARM license and get a compatible chip. If they were feeling ambitious they could even get their own chip made by someone like TSMC or Samsung.
- alexandros 11y ago
  It's not that simple. Research the story of the ODROID-W and their quest to make an rpi-compatible SBC.
  - astrodust 11y ago
    That's for an external party. Wouldn't the Pi foundation have a better idea of how to do it?
  - fragmede 11y ago
    Can you be more specific? All I'm finding is they made the ODROID-W using a specific Broadcom SoC, and Broadcom refused to supply them with it, so Hardkernel had to stop making the ODROID-W after their first production run. That seems to say that theres not a technical issue with making an rpi-compatible SBC but a political one.
    - voltagex_ 11y ago
      The best I can find is https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=85645&p=604884&hilit=odroid https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=8564..., which is pretty funny but not very informative.
- aselzer 11y ago
  But ARM != compatible with the Raspberry Pi. The GPIOs, GPU, booting process, etc. is all specific to it, and I guess manufacturing a compatible processor would need complicated if not almost impossible reverse engineering and might violate Broadcom's copyright or some contracts. And a lot of commercial products, programs and libraries depend on the Raspberry Pi, so they have to be able to continue making compatible products.
- neurotech1 11y ago
  I wonder how much IP in the BCM2835 and BCM2836 SoC actually belongs to Broadcom vs 3rd parties? My understanding is that the BCM2835/BCM2836 production run was dedicated to RasPi, although originally designed for OEM cellphone manufactures. The figure I heard was that an outsourced SoC costs around $10-20m in licensing and NRE. That is basically go to a company that already has produced SoCs (eg. Samsung) and write a check. Considering that RasPi has sold over 5m units, getting another custom Soc made is not out of reach.
userbinator 11y ago
I'm a bit more optimistic about Avago releasing more info on their SoCs. It's not quite the same thing, but I've obtained datasheets for their optical mouse sensors rather easily - possibly because of their Agilent/HP heritage. Trying to get anything from Broadcom is worse than "pulling teeth from a chook" - I've had better success with small Chinese companies like AllWinner.

vvanders 11y ago

Yeah, that's because the founder works for BC. I had the exact same though, I guess time will tell.

astrodust 11y ago

The good news is they're not stuck with a single vendor, they could theoretically go to any company with an ARM license and get a compatible chip. If they were feeling ambitious they could even get their own chip made by someone like TSMC or Samsung.

alexandros 11y ago
It's not that simple. Research the story of the ODROID-W and their quest to make an rpi-compatible SBC.
- astrodust 11y ago
  That's for an external party. Wouldn't the Pi foundation have a better idea of how to do it?
- fragmede 11y ago
  Can you be more specific? All I'm finding is they made the ODROID-W using a specific Broadcom SoC, and Broadcom refused to supply them with it, so Hardkernel had to stop making the ODROID-W after their first production run. That seems to say that theres not a technical issue with making an rpi-compatible SBC but a political one.
  - voltagex_ 11y ago
    The best I can find is https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=85645&p=604884&hilit=odroid https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=8564..., which is pretty funny but not very informative.
aselzer 11y ago
But ARM != compatible with the Raspberry Pi. The GPIOs, GPU, booting process, etc. is all specific to it, and I guess manufacturing a compatible processor would need complicated if not almost impossible reverse engineering and might violate Broadcom's copyright or some contracts. And a lot of commercial products, programs and libraries depend on the Raspberry Pi, so they have to be able to continue making compatible products.
neurotech1 11y ago
I wonder how much IP in the BCM2835 and BCM2836 SoC actually belongs to Broadcom vs 3rd parties? My understanding is that the BCM2835/BCM2836 production run was dedicated to RasPi, although originally designed for OEM cellphone manufactures. The figure I heard was that an outsourced SoC costs around $10-20m in licensing and NRE. That is basically go to a company that already has produced SoCs (eg. Samsung) and write a check. Considering that RasPi has sold over 5m units, getting another custom Soc made is not out of reach.

userbinator 11y ago

I'm a bit more optimistic about Avago releasing more info on their SoCs. It's not quite the same thing, but I've obtained datasheets for their optical mouse sensors rather easily - possibly because of their Agilent/HP heritage. Trying to get anything from Broadcom is worse than "pulling teeth from a chook" - I've had better success with small Chinese companies like AllWinner.