OK, following the comment below, the post is about the difficulties of sourcing a SoC (system-on-chip such as the ARM processors you find in most mobile devices out there) for a relatively small hardware project led by a small company. While we all get the impression that SoCs are so common that you can buy them from anywhere, the actual supply of these parts is an issue if you are not sourcing tons of them at the same time. And another intricacy is that the continuous supply of the very same chip is not a sure thing: suppliers move on to the next design year after year and it's another issue to resupply it over and over again over time.
High end SoC vendors generally don't care about you until you're buying millions of devices. If you can't find it on Digikey/Mouser/etc you're probably not going to get your hands on these parts without an in with one of the big name suppliers or the SoC vendor itself. However, in the case where you are shopping for millions of devices - say you're looking for the centerpiece of a new smartphone, its not unusual for them to fly a team of applications engineers to you to facilitate getting the part into your system.
Of course, merely procuring the part itself is just the beginning. The early revisions of a SoC (and in many cases even small microcontrollers) can have fairly extensive errata sheets (basically a list of known hardware bugs). If you aren't a first class customer (usually based on order volumes), this is a world where you can spend weeks to months wondering why your code doesn't work only to find out that it legitimately was a hardware problem in the silicon.
Trying to source displays is also a nightmare for relatively low volume (<100K) designs.
That's not always the case. It depends how hungry they are. I was involved in a project that was clearly not going to require millions of devices. We were a small startup (though with some big partners). Texas Instruments really wanted to get their SoC into this segment though and we got a lot of their attention + pre-production samples + technical support. If this is an SoC looking for customers (like this was) and you can get the ear of the marketing team and/or have the right partners things will work out.
There are a lot of other electronic parts that are like that. If you get to talk and have a relationship with the right people you can get samples and support. Otherwise it can be virtually un-obtainium if it's not in Digikey's inventory. It's always been like that...
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.
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/) 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 ..
This is, I believe, the only thing that has kept Intel in the game. Had someone had some foresight to go "all in" with the open source bit they could retake the old IBM PC spot (I'm talking about the one the PC in 1981 took away from CP/M machines, not the current spot). People who build appliances won't care but people who build computers will.
I also have the feeling that the same thing would happen if Intel decided to open up the details on their Atom SoC platforms. They're a bit like a neutered PC from what I understand, so it's a lot easier to port existing OSs to them, but without technical docs it's still hard.
I've heard from a friend that for Asian companies like MediaTek, "going through the front door" is the wrong way to approach them, unless you are a very large and well-established company.
I work for Qualcomm and am surprised that the blog post author didn't consider our SoCs - it would meet all the requirements and I believe its not too much hassle to source from us.
Thanks for the feedback! I believe ED (the one who shared his experiences from the article) did contact Qualcomm but had difficulty securing small quantities as well from them. He probably forgot to mention it this time. However, if you think that it would still be possible and if you have commercial contacts within Qualcomm, I'd be happy to put you in touch with him.
All sorts of parts can be surprisingly hard to find. I've been working on a radio product where the 16-way channel selector switch had to be specially ordered from China, while everything else came from Digikey.
The situation for hobbyists getting SoCs is terrible - I've got a MiiPC at home that won't be getting much use because Marvell won't release any documentation on it without an NDA
NDAs are firmly integrated in the embedded industry. If you could get your hands on any other SoC, you would need to sign an NDA as well. For example Tegra documentation needs an NDA too.
For anyone watching this thread, here's what I know about Qualcomm's offerings (through our embedded program partners) -
1. http://www.intrinsyc.com/products/qualcomm/dragonboard-devel...
Intrinsyc is one of the partners who offers "Dragonboards" with the latest (so far, that will change soon) SoCs (APQ8064 and contemporaries). AFAIK, these boards can be ordered in any quantity from 1 to 100s, so they should be a good start for a development kit. Intrinsyc offers a Linux distribution for the 8074 SoM. Not too sure about the maturity of Linux support, but I am expecting updates in the near future, and will post them here.
For those who need to eventually build their own boards using Qualcomm SoCs, Intrinsyc's FAQ here should be useful: http://www.intrinsyc.com/products/qualcomm/dragonboard-faq.a...
2. Inforce computing also offers a cute board with the APQ8064. http://www.inforcecomputing.com/product/qualcomm.html
This doesn't even include all the other pieces that go obsolete 2 months after you start production and then turn into unobtanium with no replacement. Oh and the manufacturers and your sources told you for months that there are no plans to stop production. The logistics of building hardware is fucking brutal.
This is true and has been true for everything non-Intel forever. I really thought open source operating systems would be a game changer for MIPS, Alpha, PowerPC, and others but it was a challenge getting hardware just to port stuff to. Literally, it took heroic efforts within those companies just get hardware to like a Linus or something.
It's a little different with some of the raspberry pi like platforms on arm but you have some work to do if you want a specific late model processor. Sort of seems like an opportunity of Someone to build arm atx and miniitx like hardware but I don't know anybody doing it. It's all custom application specific stuff anyways...
To be fair the Pandora still exists and is still produced (while you are right that it suffered huge delays in the first place linked to supply but also to manufacturing). As for the ICP2, I believe it was not just a supply issue but a lack a coordination (the design was still being discussed several months after funding).
You know, if you feel the need to link to a post that is highly specific to a narrow field of technology, which uses a lot of unexplained terms, it would be polite to actually leave a comment to explain what the post is about.
As far as I can see, the only unexplained acronym is "SoC". The first result on Google for that term is the wikipedia article explaining "System on a Chip".
HN has always been for technical news. There is always some domain specific knowledge required in technical topics. Judging by the comments here though, it's obvious that the domain specific knowledge this article assumes (which isn't particularly great - not much more than a rudimental understanding of the components that make up a computer) overlaps with quite a number of HN readers.
If you read an article that you don't understand, use it as a learning opportunity. The resources are at your fingertips!
In general HN topics should be information dense and aimed at an advanced audience.
Some use of a search engine is a good thing - it means I'm learning something new.
I'd be happy to provide a glossary, but I risk being fantastically patronising. What in particular was difficult with this post? I ask because I meed to improve the clarity of my communication. Perhaps it was the alphabet soup of different manufacturers and users and devices? Or perhaps it was the lack of a very short introductory paragraph? Or the lack of expansion ofter first use of an initialism?
a SoC question, in Steve Jobs era before he cofounded Apple he was sourcing cpus an chips in small batches by forging through junkyards,etc.
Would not these small hardware firms benefit form forming a legal co-op that ordered the SoC in batches of 100,000 and than those batches would be shred among all co-op members?
Because it may be difficult for those hardware firms to agree on using the very same chip, if they have different needs/markets/consumers/pricing and so on.
[+] [-] ekianjo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ams6110|12 years ago|reply
I thought it was going to be security related.
[+] [-] Mithaldu|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gentlefolk|12 years ago|reply
Of course, merely procuring the part itself is just the beginning. The early revisions of a SoC (and in many cases even small microcontrollers) can have fairly extensive errata sheets (basically a list of known hardware bugs). If you aren't a first class customer (usually based on order volumes), this is a world where you can spend weeks to months wondering why your code doesn't work only to find out that it legitimately was a hardware problem in the silicon.
Trying to source displays is also a nightmare for relatively low volume (<100K) designs.
[+] [-] YZF|12 years ago|reply
There are a lot of other electronic parts that are like that. If you get to talk and have a relationship with the right people you can get samples and support. Otherwise it can be virtually un-obtainium if it's not in Digikey's inventory. It's always been like that...
[+] [-] exDM69|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] fit2rule|12 years ago|reply
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/) 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 ..
[+] [-] ekianjo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] userbinator|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zimbatm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] userbinator|12 years ago|reply
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3040
[+] [-] ekianjo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KRuchan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ekianjo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ParadisoShlee|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjc50|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] voltagex_|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petermonsson|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fit2rule|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dynode|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KRuchan|12 years ago|reply
Hope this helps!
[+] [-] adestefan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheCondor|12 years ago|reply
It's a little different with some of the raspberry pi like platforms on arm but you have some work to do if you want a specific late model processor. Sort of seems like an opportunity of Someone to build arm atx and miniitx like hardware but I don't know anybody doing it. It's all custom application specific stuff anyways...
[+] [-] cordite|12 years ago|reply
Parallela board, the Pandora, the iControlPad2 from kick starter failed because of parts not being sourced on time.
[+] [-] ekianjo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mithaldu|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leoedin|12 years ago|reply
HN has always been for technical news. There is always some domain specific knowledge required in technical topics. Judging by the comments here though, it's obvious that the domain specific knowledge this article assumes (which isn't particularly great - not much more than a rudimental understanding of the components that make up a computer) overlaps with quite a number of HN readers.
If you read an article that you don't understand, use it as a learning opportunity. The resources are at your fingertips!
[+] [-] DanBC|12 years ago|reply
Some use of a search engine is a good thing - it means I'm learning something new.
I'd be happy to provide a glossary, but I risk being fantastically patronising. What in particular was difficult with this post? I ask because I meed to improve the clarity of my communication. Perhaps it was the alphabet soup of different manufacturers and users and devices? Or perhaps it was the lack of a very short introductory paragraph? Or the lack of expansion ofter first use of an initialism?
[+] [-] StuartWalker|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fredgrott|12 years ago|reply
Would not these small hardware firms benefit form forming a legal co-op that ordered the SoC in batches of 100,000 and than those batches would be shred among all co-op members?
[+] [-] ekianjo|12 years ago|reply