Update: Raspberry Pi-Compatible Development Board Cancelled 165
An anonymous reader writes "Anyone who might have been interested in the miniature Raspberry Pi compatible board mentioned here a month ago should know the board has been cancelled due to problems sourcing the Broadcom SoC. Given the less than welcoming response from the rpi community to the board's release, there is speculation as to why Hardkernel is having trouble buying the chip.
Get over it (Score:2, Informative)
There's a wide and robust SoC community out there. You people who keep pushing the Pi in our faces are doing a disservice to the larger progressive community.
Broadcom don't deal with little guys (Score:5, Informative)
I've worked with Broadcom chips in some circumstances in my job as an embedded software engineer. It's seldom been pleasant.
They won't even talk to a little player, or anyone else who is unlikely to place an order for large numbers of chips. I know of tier-2 telecommunications equipment companies - well-known names - who were turned down by Broadcom. Even if you are a big player, technical support is even harder to get. They make you sign NDAs for every little thing. I saw this becoming an issue with the Raspberry Pi when it came out a few years ago as there was no documentation for the graphics hardware.
It's just the way they do business. I think they're about volume rather than margin. They're not even vaguely interested in enthusiasts or small scale jobs.
My favourite supplier is Freescale. They make almost all their documentation and software public, and you can buy their chips singly in the channel if you want. I have a suspicion that Intel (who are showing in interest in this market) and Atmel would probably also be very helpful.
Best advice to a small project like this is very much as follows : don't bother with Broadcom. They don't want your business.
Why. (Score:5, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Eben Christopher Upton is a Technical Director and ASIC architect for Broadcom. He is also a founder and former trustee of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and now CEO of the Raspberry PI trading company.[4] He is also responsible for the overall software and hardware architecture of the Raspberry Pi device.[5][6]
There is almost nothing right in this headline. (Score:2, Informative)
a) The response in the linked thread was quite welcoming, most hoping for some competition.
b) The most likely answer is that ogdroid couldnt muster up a large enough order for SoCs so broadcom said 'nah'. The only way RPI got around this was having a broadcom employee on their team.
c) The *rumor* is that RPI pressured broadcom into not selling the chips, which was started by someone on a competitor's blog.
Re:Hardkernel wasn't using Broadcom SoC anyway? (Score:3, Informative)
No, the linked article says they are better known for their Exynos based products, this board was supposed to have the broadcom chip.
"none of them have made use of the same Broadcom BCM2835 SoC as the Pi, so none of them (until now) have been software compatible."
And the labeling on the picture shows the chip to be used.
Re:Broadcom... (Score:5, Informative)
And you know... You may be right. There was no embedded SBC market before the Pi came out.
The Pi competed on one front, and one front only. Price. And no one really competed with it. The boards of similar (but still higher) price that destroyed the Pi in functionality were around before the Pi was.
Re:Broadcom... (Score:5, Informative)
Well, Eben Upton's job working for Broadcom was probably a factor there... Personally, I'd trace the idea back before he had that job - I recall a discussion about the Gameboy Advance developer kit in the summer of 2002, and the lack of affordable programmable devices at the time. I suspect he'd have had a real struggle getting anywhere close to the Pi's target price without getting discounted access to the Broadcom SoC he used, though. I haven't spoken to him recently, but my impression was that far from "RPi Foundation pressed Broadcom to stop selling BCM2835 to competing projects" as claimed, it was more "Eben twisted arms and got Broadcom to give RPF a special cut-price deal so they could afford it".
If anyone were to bring out a rival device from a "significantly superior" competitor, I'd be delighted to see it - and I suspect most if not all of the RPF people would too, since it wasn't about making money by selling lots of systems. (Of course, Broadcom didn't buy up the remains of ARM's parent company for nothing, so I'd be surprised to see something much better from a rival!) I was happy to see the Pi being ARM based, as a fan of ARM as far back as the ARM2 I first programmed, but I'm also happy to see rivals like the MIPS32 one mentioned recently: I like ARM, but I also like having a choice of platform, both hardware and software!
Motorola did not make the 6502. (Score:2, Informative)
MOS made the 6502, not Motorola.
More reality-distorted Apple "History".
Re:Broadcom don't deal with little guys (Score:5, Informative)
They won't even talk to a little player, or anyone else who is unlikely to place an order for large numbers of chips.
They need to realize that big players start out as little players. I remember seeing an interview of Steve Jobs, and he was asked why they used the 6502 in the original Apple. He listed several technical advantages of the 6502, and then said that none of those factors had anything to with their decision.
No, his actual words were:
"fuck if I know, my nerd did all the technical bs, I could sell you insurance and I wouldnt care less"
Maybe you were referring to the Woz interview?
They used the 6502 because Motorola had given Woz a free sample.
the one where Woz said they used 6502 because MOS, and NOT motorola (motorola was busy trying to sell $300 chips), MOS sold 6502 at $25 out of a jar at Wescon in single quantities with no NDA/moq
you know, this one :
http://www.textfiles.com/apple... [textfiles.com]
"WOZNIAK: In 1975 an 8080 microprocessor cost $370 and you could only get it
from a distributor set up to deal with companies, not individual computer
enthusiasts. The 6502 was introduced at Wescon with a unique marketing
approach (thanks, Chuck Peddle) and was sold over the counter (like register
chips at the local surplus stores) for $20. I bought mine from Chuck and his
wife themselves."
Re: Broadcom... (Score:4, Informative)
As good as the BBB is, the layout sucks. My beef is the micro HDMI port is so close to the only USB port that thumb drives or fat USB plus interfere with the HDMI plug. If you have a previous gen BBB with the 2GB eMMC, the new Debian distro leaves you with 60 MB free space. The Angstrom distro is dead. So you have to boot from the SD card.
But the biggest benefit is the external memory bus for FPGA connectivity. But that disables the HDMI port as the ports are shared on the SoC.
I wish they would add more USB ports, move the HDMI port and if possible, move to an SoC that does not sacrifice the HDMI for the external memory bus. Overall it blows away the RPI.