new RPi model B planned soon

If the Model A is planned for March 2013, then RPF's banner headline will have declared the Pi as the $25 computer for a whole year by then.  Isn't there a law against such blatant long-term false advertising?

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

If the Model A is planned for March 2013, then RPF's banner headline will have declared the Pi as the $25 computer for a whole year by then.  Isn't there a law against such blatant long-term false advertising?

coder27 is being gamesome.  The link is to a 20 Feb 2012 comment where liz promises that "you'll definitely be able to buy Model As in March".  True, she doesn't specify the year.

I wonder what "device" is being updated.

Interesting to notice that now they think model A will be used for industrial applications (hard to believe it is reliable enough for that kind of environment,) and that model B is the one recommended for schools and learning.

30 weeks lead time for the BCM SoC?, that really sucks.

Interesting post pointed by your last link.

Heh, I guessed on various occasions that the bottleneck was Broadcom's maximum fabrication rate of BCM2835 SoCs and not the board manufacturing capacity nor the chosen ordering volumes.  The evidence did point to it all along, as nothing else can explain a lead time of over half a year.

As usual the fanbois tried to deny everything and paint RS as the guilty party, but coder27's links above make the situation clear.  Not even RPF can obtain more SoCs for Model A, every one produced reduces the number of BCM2835 parts for Model B.  The posts indicate that the restrictions are entirely at Broadcom's end.

Interesting that the Model A will have only 256MB RAM, if the posts are to be believed.  I expect this is more a case of increasing profit than necessity, because the BOM cost will have plummeted way below RPF's original 10-30k batch values, and 512MB is at a pricing sweet spot now or very close to it.  It's probably a reasonable choice though, because most prospective Model A users are likely to be thinking of projects where power savings are beneficial.

If the expectation is that Model A will be ready by the end of the year then it seems strange that the comments by "official people" are so fuzzy.  After all, it's Nov 26th today, so "end of year" is so close that there can't be any uncertainties remaining about expected ETA.  Only a new problem arising could change the ETA this late in the process.

Morgaine.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

Interesting that the Model A will have only 256MB RAM, if the posts are to be believed.  I expect this is more a case of increasing profit than necessity, because the BOM cost will have plummeted way below RPF's original 10-30k batch values, and 512MB is at a pricing sweet spot now or very close to it.  It's probably a reasonable choice though, because most prospective Model A users are likely to be thinking of projects where power savings are beneficial.

Unless the Model A ships soon, it will probably end up with 512MB as well.  Old timers here will remember that the Model A was originally to ship (in March 2012 ) with just 128 MB.  The inventory overhead of having two different parts will probably be high enough that they might as well do 512MB for both.

I might consider a Model A if it comes with 512MB.  My display/keyboard/pointer for RasPi is a Motorola Atrix Lapdock, which has a built-in hub with two extra USB A ports.  Right now the RasPi Model B's LAN9512 doesn't get along with the Lapdock's hub, for example a USB Flash drive works in the RasPi's spare USB A port but not in the Lapdock's.  With a 512MB Model A, there's a good chance that the Lapdock's hub will work better.  Also, the Model A will use less power since the power-hungry LAN9512 with linear regulators will be replaced by the switching regulators in the Lapdock.

But first I need to hear reports about how well browsers work with 512 MB versus 256 MB.

But first I need to hear reports about how well browsers work with 512 MB versus 256 MB.

I can report that everything is much faster on the 512mb model.

I have not used a broswer specifically but I have used programs such as gparted - which loads twice as fast on the 512mb (even with no overclock).

John Beetem wrote:

 

I might consider a Model A if it comes with 512MB.

I might consider a Model A for headless operation by plugging its single USB into an external Ethernet adapter.  That would probably overcome the Pi's USB hardware bugs, although not even that much is certain.

My original Model B is destined for framing along with a suitably blunt caption.  The Model A had better work, or I'll have to find a frame large enough to hold both, and the caption will become a lot blunter.

I'd not venture yet to say that the model A will work better USB wise since the problem is not the LAN9512 but the limitations imposed by the USB IP on the BCM2835 which is an OTG implementation than a full featured USB HOST, plus some other issues in the driver code.

Without the LAN9512 will alleviate some power and thermal issues, still not really clear how much better things will work with an ethernet interface hanging from USB.

Still power hungry (as any other ethernet PHY that sinks current through the ethernet transformer) one experiment I'm planning is to hook up a standalone ethernet controller such as the Microchip ENC28J60 (10BaseT) or ENC424J600 (10/100BaseT) via the SPI interface. These controllers are not for heavy duty networking stuff but may work well in many applications, I know that there are some Linux drivers for the ENC28J60, didn't search yet for the ENC424J600.

Model A could be a good alternative for a headless WiFi configuration, the power budget gained by removing the LAN9512 can be used to power a decent WiFi USB dongle.

About browser speed, I didn't play with it much, but didn't notice a huge difference using Midori with the 256MB or 512MB board, it runs awfully slow in both. Still X is not hardware accelerated so I don't know if that could be the root problem.

My .02

-J

Only experience will tell, but I'm hoping (for RPF's sake, not mine) that the Model A's single USB directly plugged into an external Ethernet controller with no hubs nor any other USB device in sight will manage to stay within the narrow bounds of what the crappy USB implementation on the BCM2835 can handle without errors.

We'll just have to wait and see.

To be frank I didn't have the time to dig too much into the USB problems on the BCM2835, also I don't know how crappy Synopsys IP actually is, but what I can tell from previous experiences is that it will be very challenging to make USB OTG to fully behave as a HOST, I think that some people were working trying to put together some abstraction layer on the driver so Linux sees it as a host but I still think it is a long stretch and there will be some compromises/limitations, so Model A or B, USB host IMHO will still suck.

BTW, there is a more recent thread about USB issues on the RPF Forum http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=23544

And after the "pub" yada yada, there is only a single update from Gordon and it does not say much, or what it says is not much ...

Edit: Ohhh and I just noticed another post from the "friendly moderator" essentially telling people to back off reporting problems they already know exist, what a nice gesture.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

As usual the fanbois tried to deny everything and paint RS as the guilty party, but coder27's links above make the situation clear.  Not even RPF can obtain more SoCs for Model A, every one produced reduces the number of BCM2835 parts for Model B.  The posts indicate that the restrictions are entirely at Broadcom's end.

 

Why are you talking as if the RPF has anything to do with the purchasing and distributing of the SoCs?  It's a very well know fact that they have 100% outsourced the production of the device to Farnell and RS.  Liz says "we" but knowing they don't actually produce the device, it would stand to reason that she is speaking for the business partners; something she's done often.  With a 30 week lead time, not purchasing enough SoCs would result in some crappy results like about 7 months of constantly running out of supplies because you didn't anticipate demand.  We've discussed this before, you certainly know a lot about general things and electronics, but you are out of your zone of knowledge when it comes to real life fabrication environments.  Not that I mean to absolve B-com from all responsibility here but RS started having backlog issues well within 7 months of the pi being released.  With the firm fact that there's a 30 week lead time for the SoC, it would be impossible for the problem too have been on B-com's end as all they were doing was filling the demand that RS had already requested.

Edit: Also the comment would seem to indicate that the parts being reduced by making model As is referring to the parts on hand, which again would be an issue of the one populating the board purchasing a large enough supply 7 months ago and not a matter of B-com not making enough SoCs today.

You are completely missing the point.  RPF has said clear as daylight that every Model A that could be produced would result in one less Model B being produced.  Who orders what is irrelevant.  Not enough BCM2835 devices are being produced by Broadcom, period.

If you are trying to suggest that Broadcom would deliberately switch a fab line off BCM2835 devices or run it at less than full capacity despite knowing full well that the Pi is back-ordered around the world then you are painting Broadcom as incompetent and deliberately holding back the Pi ecosystem and not being interested in selling product.   After all they know with 100% certainty that every BCM2835 manufactured would be sold tomorrow if it were available.  I find it incredible that anyone would think Broadcom is that stupid and willfully losing out on revenue.  The mind boggles.

So no, no, no, no.  The scarcity has absolutely nothing to do with poor order planning by one partner, because that wouldn't alter the picture even if it were true (and indeed it might be true, I'm not saying it's not, but only that it's irrelevant).  You're listening too much to RPF excuses (which you should realize operate very much as an arm of Broadcom) and not thinking about what your interpretation would say about Broadcom's commercial interest.  They are in this to make money.  If they're not printing money by churning out chips faster than they are now when they know full well that they could sell every one instantly, then you can be certain that it has nothing to do with missing paperwork.  The only answer that makes commercial sense is that they don't have any more capacity.

Morgaine.

You are completely missing the point.  RPF has said clear as daylight that every Model A that could be produced would result in one less Model B being produced.  Who orders what is irrelevant.  Not enough BCM2835 devices are being produced by Broadcom, period.

If you are trying to suggest that Broadcom would deliberately switch a fab line off BCM2835 devices or run it at less than full capacity despite knowing full well that the Pi is back-ordered around the world then you are painting Broadcom as incompetent and deliberately holding back the Pi ecosystem and not being interested in selling product.   After all they know with 100% certainty that every BCM2835 manufactured would be sold tomorrow if it were available.  I find it incredible that anyone would think Broadcom is that stupid and willfully losing out on revenue.  The mind boggles.

So no, no, no, no.  The scarcity has absolutely nothing to do with poor order planning by one partner, because that wouldn't alter the picture even if it were true (and indeed it might be true, I'm not saying it's not, but only that it's irrelevant).  You're listening too much to RPF excuses (which you should realize operate very much as an arm of Broadcom) and not thinking about what your interpretation would say about Broadcom's commercial interest.  They are in this to make money.  If they're not printing money by churning out chips faster than they are now when they know full well that they could sell every one instantly, then you can be certain that it has nothing to do with missing paperwork.  The only answer that makes commercial sense is that they don't have any more capacity.

Morgaine.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

You are completely missing the point.  RPF has said clear as daylight that every Model A that could be produced would result in one less Model B being produced.  Who orders what is irrelevant.  Not enough BCM2835 devices are being produced by Broadcom, period.

 

If you are trying to suggest that Broadcom would deliberately switch a fab line off BCM2835 devices or run it at less than full capacity despite knowing full well that the Pi is back-ordered around the world then you are painting Broadcom as incompetent and deliberately holding back the Pi ecosystem and not being interested in selling product.   After all they know with 100% certainty that every BCM2835 manufactured would be sold tomorrow if it were available.  I find it incredible that anyone would think Broadcom is that stupid and willfully losing out on revenue.  The mind boggles.

 

So no, no, no, no.  The scarcity has absolutely nothing to do with poor order planning by one partner, because that wouldn't alter the picture even if it were true (and indeed it might be true, I'm not saying it's not, but only that it's irrelevant).  You're listening too much to RPF excuses (which you should realize operate very much as an arm of Broadcom) and not thinking about what your interpretation would say about Broadcom's commercial interest.  They are in this to make money.  If they're not printing money by churning out chips faster than they are now when they know full well that they could sell every one instantly, then you can be certain that it has nothing to do with missing paperwork.  The only answer that makes commercial sense is that they don't have any more capacity.

 

Morgaine.

Again, we've discussed this before but I'll say it again.  That's not how fabrication works.  There is not a single line dedicated to each chip.  You'll have a line for each genre of devices (hard drive platters, CPU, etc), but you will not have a "BCM2835" line.  This is why they have such a high production time.  You schedule a period of time to produce a specific chip in, once its turn is done you move to the next.  B-com like any other fab out there will build only to meet what has been ordered, and while that might mean they build a little extra to fill out the line, odds are they have an order increment that forces the customer to fill the line.

I'll also would like to point out again that the product availability being dicussed by Liz would quite logically being the amount they have in hand, a quantity that would have been ordered 7 months ago by the respective distributor and has nothing to do with how quickly or how much b-com could produce with an order placed today.  B-com isn't going to stop manufacture of its other chips just to alter an order for this "low cost" chip to meet the demand for it within the Rpi community.  That's just bad business practice.

I'm afraid what you say doesn't make commercial sense for Broadcom nor for RS nor for RPF, so I don't believe it holds water.  But let me try a completely different tack to demonstrate that your explanation just doesn't work.

Let's assume just for a moment that Broadcom has a mind of its own and is not just a fab contract house as you make it out to be.  Let's say that they have their eyes open and notice that the demand for BCM2835 is huge and that there is zero risk associated with producing devices not to order but for buffer stock.  And let's assume that they did so.

Now, assuming that this happened, what would be the result of Broadcom's sales department picking up the phone and dialing RS's number and saying "Oh RS, guess what, we have the N devices that you wished you had ordered 500 years ago in stock, do you want them?"  (There could even be a small markup over and above contract order pricing.)

Now don't tell me that you think RS would say "Nah, not interested mate.  We're totally happy having our reputation dragged through the mud like it is now thanks, we'll talk to you again in mid-2013 for our next batch."

It would stretch incredulity, so I can't believe that there is any possibility at all of such a response.  RS would love to slash its waiting lists to nil overnight if it could, and it would if given half a chance.  RS would win, Broadcom would win (through slightly more profit for them and a happier Pi ecosystem), and RPF would win massively by Model A not being delayed by the SoC shortage and by being able to strut around with a big smiles on their faces after proclaiming "No more delivery queues anywhere, order freely now."

When everybody would win in this picture, why theorize that Broadcom is totally inept in business and thwarted by some missing paperwork?  It just doesn't make sense.

I'm not often on the side of Broadcom because of their total dislike of openess, but I do believe that they have the business sense to print money when that option is available to them.  And it is.

Morgaine.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

I'm afraid what you say doesn't make commercial sense for Broadcom nor for RS nor for RPF, so I don't believe it holds water.  But let me try a completely different tack to demonstrate that your explanation just doesn't work.

 

Let's just assume for a moment that Broadcom has a mind of its own and is not just a fab contract house as you make it out to be.  Let's say that they have their eyes open and notice that the demand for BCM2835 is huge and that there is zero risk associated with producing devices not to order but for buffer stock.  And let's assume that they did so.

 

Now, assuming that this happened, what would be the result of Broadcom's sales department picking up the phone and dialing RS's number and saying "Oh RS, guess what, we have the N devices that you wished you had ordered 500 years ago in stock, do you want them?"  (There could even be a small markup over and above contract order pricing.)

 

Now don't tell me that you think RS would say "Nah, not interested mate.  We're totally happy having our reputation dragged through the mud like it is now thanks, we'll talk to you again in mid-2013 for our next batch."

 

It would stretch incredulity, so I can't believe that there is any possibility at all of such a response.  RS would love to slash its waiting lists to nil overnight if it would, and it would if given half a chance.  RS would win, Broadcom would win (through slightly more profit for them and a happier Pi ecosystem), and RPF would win massively by Model A not being delayed by the SoC shortage and by being able to strut around with a big smiles on their faces after proclaiming "No more delivery queues anywhere, order freely now."

 

When everybody would win in this picture, why theorize that Broadcom is totally inept in business and thwarted by some missing paperwork?  It just doesn't make sense.

 

I'm not often on the side of Broadcom because of their total dislike of openess, but I do believe that they have the business sense to print money when that option is available to them.  And it is.

 

Morgaine.

If only that was the way fabrication worked!  It certainly would have made my life easier, but alas!  It isn't.  The fabrication people would get beat (sued) to no end if they called up someone and say "hey, your competitor is buying X times the amount you are.  Maybe they know something you don't, would you like to order more?"  That's both bad for business and breaking NDAs.  Now don't get me wrong, you have laid out some mighty fine logic there, extremely well thought out!  But it's obvious you've never worked in a fab plant because you keep talking nonsense in this area (no offense meant, it's just the plain truth).  Now I have real world experience in a fabrication environment, you can keep calling it crazy (which it most certainly is) and trying reject it, but it really is the way these places work! 

It also helps to keep in mind that B-com doesn't care about everyone winning, they care about b-com winning.  And B-com has most certainly won throughout this affair.  More importantly they have to keep winning by keeping their schedules with all their customers.  As crazy successful as the Pi has been, they're just a small part of their big picture their Q4 earnings were 1.82 Billion Dollars.  So far the pi has sold something in the range of .5 Million units (according to Liz's projections).  If they pay 5 dollars per chip that would only represent 2.5 Million, at 10 dollars a pop it would still only be 5 Million, heck if they made $35 of every board it will still only be 17.5 Million dollars in B-com piggy bank or what 1/100th of a percent of their Quarterly income?  B-com has bigger money makers than the pi and their version of winning is making sure that the big income makers stay on schedule.

The Rpi is like a toy, despite the hype in terms of mass market is in nobody's radar screen, it is still really unclear what's the relationship between RPF and Broadcom besides the intersection with some full time employees contributing to RPF, the agreement between RPF and the manufacturer/distributors is a mistery secret, then in the worst case scenario if demand keeps constant or growing we may have to wait much longer to get a board.

PS. Don't feed the trolls

mynameisJim wrote:

 

It also helps to keep in mind that B-com doesn't care about everyone winning, they care about b-com winning.  And B-com has most certainly won throughout this affair.  More importantly they have to keep winning by keeping their schedules with all their customers.

But that's precisely the point that I've been making all along, that Broadcom has no spare capacity to fabricate more BCM2835 devices!  If you have no spare capacity at the plant then to make more capacity for a particular device would require giving other contract work the boot, and as you say that other contract work almost certainly pays better than the low-margin Pi manufacturers can offer.

So we're actually saying the same thing, in different ways.  The problem is entirely at Broadcom's end through a lack of fab capacity.  The long lead times for BCM2835 result from this total lack of capacity requiring Pi orders to be slotted in after other contracts are fulfilled, which would not happen at all if they had spare capacity.

How can this not be clear?

[Addendum.  Of course this is all speculative since we'll never know what actually happens at Broadcom nor its relationship with its customers, but I'm interested in the core problem that is the root cause of the very long delivery times, and it seems very clear that the core problem is fabrication constraints, not paperwork.  The fact that devices are not available to RS now because an order was not placed many months ago is just a consequence of the lack of fabrication capacity.  The lack of fabrication capacity came first.  You can't blame the lack of fabrication capacity on the lack of an order being placed.  Orders don't create capacity, they just affect the scheduling of different orders in a capacity-limited fabrication plant.]

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

mynameisJim wrote:

 

It also helps to keep in mind that B-com doesn't care about everyone winning, they care about b-com winning.  And B-com has most certainly won throughout this affair.  More importantly they have to keep winning by keeping their schedules with all their customers.

 

But that's precisely the point that I've been making all along, that Broadcom has no spare capacity to fabricate more BCM2835 devices!  If you have no spare capacity at the plant then to make more capacity for a particular device would require giving other contract work the boot, and as you say that other contract work almost certainly pays better than the low-margin Pi manufacturers can offer.

 

So we're actually saying the same thing, in different ways.  The problem is entirely at Broadcom's end through a lack of fab capacity.  The long lead times for BCM2835 result from this total lack of capacity requiring Pi orders to be slotted in after other contracts are fulfilled, which would not happen at all if they had spare capacity.

 

How can this not be clear?

Because it is ultimately the responsibility of the customer to factor in the lead time for the part and order appropriately.  If RS had ordered a large enough quantity to meet the demand of the device then the lead time wouldn't have mattered.

Now I will make a caveat that the launch debacle (no offense to any R-pi peps) was a failing at all points, but beyond that there should have been some recognition of upcoming demand and ordered appropriately, Fanell did, RS didn't.

I will further add that while we're specifically discussing the RS issue, I'll swing this back round (which is only appropriate since I swung us off course in the first place, lol) to the current issue at hand not enough SoCs for the model A and the Model B (which going back to the original post's link to Liz is actually an issue of we have enough parts to meet the current demand for the model B, but not enough to meet the demand for the B and add the A).  The issue there is also not that B-com can't supply the chip.  They'll supply what ever quantity the customer asks for which brings me right back to my first sentence.  B-com is not responsible for calculating the demand for its customers.  It's their job to meet the request the customer puts in and in the time frame they've been quoted.

We might be arguing semantics at this point, but the crux of what I'm saying is Farnell and RS are the one responsible for ordering enough of the product to last them between productions of the chip, it's not B-coms job to offer more production times (unless demand for the chip exceeds production capacity) nor to keep a large amount of their chip "in stock" to be bought up by the suppliers whenever they want to make more boards than they planned for.   Whereas you are arguing, if I understand your position correctly, that it's entirely b-coms responsibility to offer more production times for the small time chip or bare the responsibility for not producing enough of the chip.

mynameisJim wrote:

 

Whereas you are arguing, if I understand your position correctly, that it's entirely b-coms responsibility to offer more production times for the small time chip or bare the responsibility for not producing enough of the chip.

I'm not saying either of those things.  I'm saying that the root cause of all the delays is lack of spare capacity at Broadcom, and you've agreed with me but using different words.

However, you prefer to place the blame on RS and somehow twist it to look as if an order placed by RS could magically create new fabrication capacity at Broadcom.  It can't.  At most it can affect scheduling of what is fabricated on capacity-limited equipment so that RS's devices get manufactured before those of another customer.  The restricted fabrication capacity remains restricted though, whether it is producing devices for RS or for someone else.  An order won't bring a new fabrication plant online, that costs billions.  It is accurate to state (assuming of course that our speculation is correct) that Broadcom's lack of spare capacity is the limiting factor.

I am much more interested in technology than in paperwork, and hence blame has to follow root cause.by logical necessity, because the relationship between supply and fulfilled demand is directly causal.  Good timing of order placement can paper over shortages in the same way that a buffer can smooth flow irregularities, but order timing does not have the same causal importance as production capacity.  Indeed, the very need for buffering highlights that the supply is constrained in what it can deliver, so the analogy is apt.

It seems that although we're both blindly examining the same elephant, we're each feeling different parts and so can't agree what on what it looks like.  It's the same elephant though, and it can't stomp out enough BCM2835.

Hey I'm back from my hols ins Sunny SIngapore. Back to the grindstone mates!

First things first. People are forgetting the Broadcom are a fabless company i.e. they do not own any fabs, so they have to book fab time. Now, I also used to work for a fabless company, hence my sunny antipodean attitude, so I know that you only book fab time for order. You reallty really don't build stuff you don't have orders for. It cost a bloody fortune to store it, and then you might not sell it. I happen to know that a particular fabless company has been caught out in the past with excess stock, and lost a *** load of $. I cannot see Broadcom speculatively making batches of SoC's, that not good business sense. Even with some of the the Pi Foundations people working at Broadcom they weon;t have the influence to get stuff made specultively. Well, I reckon not anyway. Also, this is a minor footnote on their balance sheet - they made $2B turnover last quarter.

So what the mynnameisjim poster said is right - this is a problem with order quantities from the people making the stuff. Nothing to to with Broadcom. They could easy make enough chips - or at least TSMC could - if they got the orders. Just expect those orders to be delivered in 30 wks or whatever TSMC's current lead time is. (30wks sounds high)

Billy Thornton wrote:

 

I cannot see Broadcom speculatively making batches of SoC's, that not good business sense.

Making BCM2835 SoCs is speculative in what universe?

Would you care to suggest some viable scenario under which manufactured BCM2835 devices would not be sold as quickly as buyers can click a mouse?