
Securing a SoC is Not Easy - ekianjo
http://pandoralive.info/?p=2808.
======
ekianjo
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.

~~~
ams6110
Sourcing is a better word than "securing" though the title is accurately
quoted.

I thought it was going to be security related.

~~~
ekianjo
Agree, Sourcing may have been a better wording. Securing was used here in its
other meaning.

------
gentlefolk
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.

~~~
YZF
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...

~~~
jwr
Yes, Texas Instruments does that, I had the same experience (were we involved
in the same project?). They do it if they are strategically interested in a
certain market segment. Your project might look like a demo to them — worth
investing some time and effort into.

Unfortunately, I'd say they are the exception. Good luck even getting someone
at Broadcom or Qualcomm to speak to you. If your projected volumes are not
(convincingly) into at least hundreds of thousands, you will get a simple
"no", if you even manage to get an answer at all.

~~~
KRuchan
Engineer at Qualcomm here - I did check with our biz dev folks and we have
mechanisms in place to supply in smaller quantities (a few hundreds..)

~~~
jwr
Interesting! Things might have changed, then. But to confirm: do you mean I
can simply start developing a product based on Qualcomm chips (with projected
volumes into hundreds or low thousands), and I'll get access to all the
necessary documentation (datasheets, reference designs, etc)?

~~~
KRuchan
@jwr: Sorry for the delayed reply, was down with a fever. (Posted the info
below in a separate comment, in case anyone stumbles across the thread later).
1\. [http://www.intrinsyc.com/products/qualcomm/dragonboard-
devel...](http://www.intrinsyc.com/products/qualcomm/dragonboard-development-
kits.aspx) Intrinsyc is one of two 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...](http://www.intrinsyc.com/products/qualcomm/dragonboard-faq.aspx) 2\.
Inforce computing also offers a cute board with the APQ8064.
[http://www.inforcecomputing.com/product/qualcomm.html](http://www.inforcecomputing.com/product/qualcomm.html)

Not sure if these offer the level of detail/support that folks here are
looking for, but they seem like a good start.

------
exDM69
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.

~~~
fit2rule
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
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.

------
ChuckMcM
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.

~~~
zimbatm
I get what you mean but selling 1000 units is hardly a game changer :p

~~~
ChuckMcM
You both correct and very very wrong at the same time. What history has shown
in the technology world is that the person making "1000 units" is changing the
game, just the game doesn't know it yet.

The folks who embrace selling in small quantities to the individual developers
see a huge diversity in designs that are built with their tech, that trains up
the tech provider on the strong and weak points of the technology and often
helps them produce easier to implement solutions. The diversity of designs
trains the consumers on possibilities which they may not be considering. When
they connect, as they did with putting a microprocessor into a "home"
computer, the results can be stunning.

So you don't sell 1000 units because you think _this guy_ is going change the
world, you sell them in 1000 unit quantities to a bunch of guys and gals
because one of them may change the world in a way you haven't foreseen, and if
they do, you will benefit hugely from being the tech they used.

------
userbinator
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.

[http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3040](http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3040)

~~~
ekianjo
So what is the recommended approach ? (sorry if the link you shared answers
the question, i have not checked it yet)

~~~
mutagen
The link, and indeed the whole blog, is worth reading. However, it doesn't
directly answer the question. Bunnie suggests dealing with Chinese brokers who
can source availability of 'cut tape', remnants from large production runs of
the chip. It doesn't address consistency and reliable supply issues over a
longer period of time but does allow for procurement of relatively small
quantities of parts.

Bunnie also suggests learning enough Chinese to participate in what he terms
the "gongkai" (公开), the quasi-open but legally murky design and production
ecosystem producing much of our electronics, where documentation and specs are
apparently available about as freely as torrented episodes of Game of Thrones.

~~~
userbinator
The idea is to "feed off the leftovers" until you grow to the point where you
can order above the MOQ directly. It's a very different growth model.

~~~
DanBC
Brokers are very common in electronic production.

You need to be careful when asking for quotes. If Bob has stock of product,
and you ask 3 different brokers for quotes, you've just driven cost of that
product up.

That's especially frustrating when three or four sub contractors are
requesting quotes for the same part to be used for the same potential job
being inquired about by the end customer.

------
KRuchan
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.

~~~
ekianjo
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.

~~~
KRuchan
Yes, would be happy to talk with your colleague and point him to the right
contacts. I am at the San Diego headquarters.

~~~
fit2rule
I also have a need (and am also an avid OpenPandora groupie) for a SoC vendor
- any chance I could get your contact info as well? I'd be very happy to
consider Qualcomm for my project..

~~~
KRuchan
How do I reach you? Not too happy sharing a company/personal email address
here and my name is too complicated to describe my ID in a email-address-
extractor-safe way.

~~~
fit2rule
boyikor@postalmail.biz is a tempmail I set up for the purpose ..

------
pjc50
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.

------
voltagex_
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

~~~
petermonsson
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.

~~~
brigade
Freescale and TI tend to be good about providing heaps of documentation
without requiring any NDA.

Unfortunately, they're pretty alone in that regard.

~~~
joezydeco
I tend to think the only reason TI and Freescale have good documentation is
because they've been in the market a lot longer than the others and have had
time to mature the work. TI had early wins with Nokia and Freescale has been
in the automotive market and had some early multimedia work like the Toshiba
Gigabeat (aka Zune 1).

Providing a complete doc set for these chips runs well above 10,000 pages. I
recently got to evaluate a Marvell chipset and...um...let's say it wasn't
pretty.

------
KRuchan
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...](http://www.intrinsyc.com/products/qualcomm/dragonboard-development-
kits.aspx) 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...](http://www.intrinsyc.com/products/qualcomm/dragonboard-faq.aspx) 2\.
Inforce computing also offers a cute board with the APQ8064.
[http://www.inforcecomputing.com/product/qualcomm.html](http://www.inforcecomputing.com/product/qualcomm.html)

Hope this helps!

------
adestefan
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.

------
TheCondor
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...

------
cordite
Woh-hold on now, I have a Pandora (though it got delivered too late for me to
really use it) Getting parts has always been a rough time!

Parallela board, the Pandora, the iControlPad2 from kick starter failed
because of parts not being sourced on time.

~~~
ekianjo
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).

~~~
fit2rule
Actually, the iCP2 died because of a total failure of its management to get
things sorted out. The drama around Mr. Rothwell and his hijinks is _bound_ to
be a made-for-TV movie one of these days .. assuming that EvilDragon makes it
with the Pyra, and gets some fame/fortune in the next project.

(Disclaimer: I'm an OP fan, a first-batch'er, and avid supporter of everything
that EvilDragon and his motley crew are getting up to..)

~~~
cordite
Nice to meet you, I am as well. Craig is quite a character.

I think the failure also comes from changing the design mid process.

------
Mithaldu
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.

~~~
leoedin
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!

------
StuartWalker
I would never have known they were difficult to obtain.

------
fredgrott
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?

~~~
ekianjo
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.

