This is a page describing a proposed mass-volume SoC. It outlines:
-* the NREs involved (realistically USD $7m, with headroom up to $12m preferred)
+* the Non-Recurring Engineering (NRE) costs involved (realistically USD $7m, with headroom up to $12m preferred)
* proposes a fair market price (around $12-13)
* estimates a manufacturing cost (around $3.50 to $4)
* realistic industry-standard timescales (12-18 months).
a preferred route that is not unreasonable and has been achieved before
in the Silicon Industry.
+**This is a POWER PI candidate, but why was the Raspberry Pi successful?**
+
+As a dedicated Set-Top Box / IPTV solution, the initial Pi processor,
+the 700 mhz ARM11 BCM2835, was only available from Broadcomm in
+Minimum Order Quantities (MOQ) of 5 million and above. As a
+specialist Vertical Market Applications Processor, it was *not
+available* for use in products on the general market.
+
+The *only reason*
+that it went into the Raspberry Pi at all (selling in far smaller quantities) was because Eben Upton was an employee of Broadcom and had access to NDA'd internal datasheets. Crucially: on
+learning that it was to be deployed in an Educational market, Broadcom
+could not exactly say "no."
+
+In eight years, 36 million "Pi" units have been sold. However this is not
+all the same processor: there are four variants (Model A/B thru Pi 4). Thus
+actual quantities sold through the Pi Foundation of any one given processor
+average only around a million units, each processor. As above: 1 million
+sales barely covers the NREs.
+
+In the intervening years, despite persistent requests on Pi Forums,
+even efforts by the Raspberry Pi Foundation themselves to see a non-Broadcom processor
+be developed and deployed have not been successful because a Pi-only-centric
+processor *does not have a large enough market share to justify the NREs*.
+
+**The lesson here is that a low-cost processor must cover multiple markets
+to be successful**.
+
+Consequently the Libre-SOC "POWER Pi" is designed to enter multiple
+disparate large-volume markets: the Educational and Open aspects
+may thus be considered an essential part of the P.R. rather than as
+major sales opportunities.
+
# Specs for 22/28nm SOC
**Overall goal: an SoC that is capable of meeting multiple markets:**
- dual 32-bit DDR3/4 interfaces.
- Suitable for 4k HD resolution screens and Graphics Card capability.
-By re-packaging the same die in different FPGA packages it meets the
+By re-packaging the same die in different FBGA packages it meets the
needs of different markets without significant NREs. Texas Instruments
and Freescale/NXP and many other companies follow this practice.
* USD 400,000 for engineer to perform layout to GDS-II
* USD 1,000,000 for (LP)DDR3/4 which includes customisation by IP vendor
* USD 250,000 for Libre-licensed DDR firmware (normally closed binary)
-* USD 250,000 for USB3/C
+* USD 250,000 for USB3.1/2/C
* USD 250,000 for HDMI PHY (includes HDCP closed firmware: DVI may be better)
* USD 50,000 for PCIe PHY
* USD 50,000 for RGMII Ethernet PHY
- Standard "Pi / Arduino" SoC-style interfaces including UART, I2C,
SPI, GPIO, PWM, EINT, AC97.
-The "PI / Arduino" style interfaces are provided so as to be pin-comoatibke with the existing "Shield" 3rd party producy markets.
+The "PI / Arduino" style interfaces are provided so as to be pin-compatible with the existing "Shield" 3rd party product markets.
# Interfaces
-Much of the advanced section is "under consideration" because there are proprietary firmware issues involved as well as high power consumption and high costs involved. OpenCAPI for example would, in 22nm, at 25 ghz, be an enormous power draw (IBM used 14nm for the POWER9 25ghz SERDES)
+Much of the advanced section is "under consideration" because there are proprietary firmware issues involved as well as high power consumption and high costs involved. OpenCAPI for example would, in 22nm, at 25 GHz, be an enormous power draw (IBM used 14nm for the POWER9 25GHz SERDES)
-HDCP is present in HDMI, as well as being optional in eDP and by extension USB-C as well. Licensing of any of these Controllers therefore introduces the risk of closed firmware which will be viewed unfavourably by the educational markets, libre/open supporters and advocates, as well as cause Customer Support issues and introduce security vulnerabilities that *cannot be fixed or evaluated*.
+HDCP is present in HDMI, as well as being optional in eDP and by extension USB-C as well. Licensing of any of these Controllers therefore introduces the risk of closed firmware which will be viewed unfavorably by the educational markets, libre/open supporters and advocates, as well as cause Customer Support issues and introduce security vulnerabilities that *cannot be fixed or evaluated*.
Great care therefore needs to be taken in selecting the advanced interfaces.
projects / libreriscv.git / blobdiff