Securing a SoC is Not Easy • Hacker News Board

Re: Securing a SoC is Not Easy

#41

Post by exDM69 » Wed, Feb 05, 2014, 12:02 PM UTC

fit2rule wrote: post #30

exDM69 wrote: post #27

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…

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 ma…

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.

Re: Securing a SoC is Not Easy

#42

Post by ekianjo » Wed, Feb 05, 2014, 12:22 PM UTC

fit2rule wrote: post #31

voltagex_ wrote: post #6

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

Check out ACME systems - they're doing a good job of addressing this problem: http://www.acmesystems.it/

Nice but it's all ARM9 based, so nothing at the high end as far I could see in that page.

Re: Securing a SoC is Not Easy

#43

Post by rdl » Wed, Feb 05, 2014, 12:53 PM UTC

KRuchan wrote: post #19

ekianjo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

I actually am in the SoC market too, and would love a contact in sales/pre-sales. SFBA.

Re: Securing a SoC is Not Easy

#44

Post by adestefan » Wed, Feb 05, 2014, 1:01 PM UTC

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.

Re: Securing a SoC is Not Easy

#45

Post by fredgrott » Wed, Feb 05, 2014, 1:33 PM UTC

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?

Re: Securing a SoC is Not Easy

#46

Post by ekianjo » Wed, Feb 05, 2014, 1:42 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #29

exDM69 wrote: post #27

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…

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

Let me revise my statement: actually in the 10ks of units.

Re: Securing a SoC is Not Easy

#47

Post by ekianjo » Wed, Feb 05, 2014, 1:44 PM UTC

fredgrott wrote: post #45

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.

Re: Securing a SoC is Not Easy

#48

Post by TheCondor » Wed, Feb 05, 2014, 2:33 PM UTC

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...

Re: Securing a SoC is Not Easy

#49

Post by Narishma » Wed, Feb 05, 2014, 2:37 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #40

ChuckMcM wrote: post #24

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.

What technical details are missing? I was under the impression that Intel has the most open SoCs around. The only thing I can think of is the PowerVR GPUs in some of their older chips, but those aren't theirs to open, and they stopped using them in recent SoCs in favor of their own GPUs.

Re: Securing a SoC is Not Easy

#50

Post by DanBC » Wed, Feb 05, 2014, 2:41 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #39

mutagen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 suggest…

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.

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.