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.

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?

It's speculative right up to the point someone orders them - until then, they are  chips sitting on a shelf in a warehouse. And look, fabless companies don't like warehouses, they like to make stuff and ship it stright to the user - it's much cheaper. That's how they work. Now I reckon they can sell a shitload, but even Apple under order stuff just in case. And remember, there is a 30wk (still don't beleive that one) lead time - that's over 6 months, a lot can happen in 6 months.

Still, as I said, this is nothing to do with Broadcoms capacity as you have been arguing, since they don't actually have ANY capacity at all. It's all contracted out, and the people they contract out to have LOTS of capacity, and will make whatever you ask. So, rather than changing the subject, absorb that information, and explain how it's not the fault of RS and Farnell's ordering too few.

Billy Thornton wrote:

 

It's speculative right up to the point someone orders them - until then, they are  chips sitting on a shelf in a warehouse.

It's not speculation when there is no uncertainty or risk involved, and you have not offered any viable scenario containing uncertainty or risk.  And the chips don't need to sit on any shelves, they can be offered in advance very trivially.  Indeed this is totally normal, no different to offering for preorder.

Still, as I said, this is nothing to do with Broadcoms capacity as you have been arguing, since they don't actually have ANY capacity at all. It's all contracted out, and the people they contract out to have LOTS of capacity, and will make whatever you ask.

You can't have it both ways.  If Broadcom's capacity is all contracted out, and the people they contract out to have LOTS of capacity, and will make whatever Broadcom asks, then Broadcom's inability to produce SoCs at a higher rate and with less lead time is even less comprehensible.  Third parties would be falling over themselves to manufacture more BCM2835 for Broadcom given the demand for Pi worldwide, because "LOTS of capacity" that is twiddling its thumbs is very costly.

That doesn't seem to be what is happening here.  Admittedly we're speculating, but some things look more likely than others, and a surplus of capacity on which to produce BCM2835 seems extraordinarily unlikely.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

You can't have it both ways.  If Broadcom's capacity is all contracted out, and the people they contract out to have LOTS of capacity, and will make whatever Broadcom asks, then Broadcom's inability to produce SoCs at a higher rate and with less lead time is even less comprehensible.  Third parties would be falling over themselves to manufacture more BCM2835 for Broadcom given the demand for Pi worldwide, because "LOTS of capacity" that is twiddling its thumbs is very costly.

 

That doesn't seem to be what is happening here.  Admittedly we're speculating, but some things look more likely than others, and a surplus of capacity on which to produce BCM2835 seems extraordinarily unlikely.

And that is where the ball returns to my court.  Fabs don't want to handle excess storage (of finished product) either.  So they won't keep a high capacity either (I was quite surprised to hear that B-com did not directly fab the chip themselves though).  You're logic is backwards though, the fact they don't have their own fab facility will actually increases turn around time as they become a middleman (so to speak) in the process.  They are bound by the fab's schedule which means they really can't adjust an order at the last minute.  Which again brings us full circle to the fact that it is the responsibility of the customer to appropriately plan for the demand of a product in accordance with the suppliers schedule. It should also be noted, again, that the pi is not some big ticket item so no, fabs will not be falling over themselves to manufacture the chip.  Besides, I'm willing to bet that B-com has some very specific NDAs and contracts that prevent them from doing just that in exchange for good deals.

And you really got to get the idea that not making the BCM2835 = wasted time or a waste of capacity.  Fab plants will build no more and no less than what has been ordered.  Any time they're not making the BCM2835, they're making other chips.  Fab facilities wait for no one!  Which makes more sense to you?  Fill a big order for a customer to meet deadlines, or building some extra low cost chips in the eventuality that a customer might want some more of it before the next run?  That a waste of time material and storage space, plus the fab facility has no guarantees that the chip will still be in demand in the future.  As much as I like the pi, it could flop at any minute.  People could get tired of the USB issues, or decide they'd rather pay double and get a little bit faster android device for their media center needs.  It's insanely bad business for a fab facility to make an excess of a product that the customer hasn't ordered rather than moving things onto filling the next product that has a customer waiting right now to purchase it.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

You can't have it both ways.  If Broadcom's capacity is all contracted out, and the people they contract out to have LOTS of capacity, and will make whatever Broadcom asks, then Broadcom's inability to produce SoCs at a higher rate and with less lead time is even less comprehensible.  Third parties would be falling over themselves to manufacture more BCM2835 for Broadcom given the demand for Pi worldwide, because "LOTS of capacity" that is twiddling its thumbs is very costly.

 

That doesn't seem to be what is happening here.  Admittedly we're speculating, but some things look more likely than others, and a surplus of capacity on which to produce BCM2835 seems extraordinarily unlikely.

And that is where the ball returns to my court.  Fabs don't want to handle excess storage (of finished product) either.  So they won't keep a high capacity either (I was quite surprised to hear that B-com did not directly fab the chip themselves though).  You're logic is backwards though, the fact they don't have their own fab facility will actually increases turn around time as they become a middleman (so to speak) in the process.  They are bound by the fab's schedule which means they really can't adjust an order at the last minute.  Which again brings us full circle to the fact that it is the responsibility of the customer to appropriately plan for the demand of a product in accordance with the suppliers schedule. It should also be noted, again, that the pi is not some big ticket item so no, fabs will not be falling over themselves to manufacture the chip.  Besides, I'm willing to bet that B-com has some very specific NDAs and contracts that prevent them from doing just that in exchange for good deals.

And you really got to get the idea that not making the BCM2835 = wasted time or a waste of capacity.  Fab plants will build no more and no less than what has been ordered.  Any time they're not making the BCM2835, they're making other chips.  Fab facilities wait for no one!  Which makes more sense to you?  Fill a big order for a customer to meet deadlines, or building some extra low cost chips in the eventuality that a customer might want some more of it before the next run?  That a waste of time material and storage space, plus the fab facility has no guarantees that the chip will still be in demand in the future.  As much as I like the pi, it could flop at any minute.  People could get tired of the USB issues, or decide they'd rather pay double and get a little bit faster android device for their media center needs.  It's insanely bad business for a fab facility to make an excess of a product that the customer hasn't ordered rather than moving things onto filling the next product that has a customer waiting right now to purchase it.

mynameisJim wrote:

 

the fact they don't have their own fab facility will actually increases turn around time as they become a middleman (so to speak) in the process.  They are bound by the fab's schedule which means they really can't adjust an order at the last minute.

That's not consistent with Billy's "the people they contract out to have LOTS of capacity, and will make whatever you ask".  Which is it, lots of capacity allowing Broadcom to enjoy a buyer's market, or very restricted capacity making fabrication a seller's market and giving Broadcom little to no options?

You're both attempting to substantiate the same conclusion from incompatible premises, so one of you is clearly wrong.  Even if each were true separately, they can't both be true simultaneously.

In addition to one of you being necessarily wrong, you're both making out that Broadcom's business planners are incompetent at capitalizing on a massive demand for one of their chips, and that suggests strongly that you're both wrong.  I may not like Broadcom's secrecy practices, but I see no sign that they are incompetent at getting devices made cheaply and in vast numbers, under either of your premises.  If they could make money from this insatiable demand, they would, even if the profit is less than when producing other devices.  It's still profitable for them, and nobody has suggested otherwise (yet).

By Occam's Razor, the fact that they aren't making money from it at the rate for which there is demand suggests that they can't do so, because competent business people (which I believe they are) would find a way if it were at all possible.  They've had since the start of March to fully realize the scale of demand and react to it in a way that would capitalize on the world's hunger for an old chip on which their investment has already been recouped, so it's all straight profit.  I do not think they would look this gift horse in the mouth.

So, you'll have to find a much stronger reason for the company's apparent inability to knock out large numbers of these SoCs than you have so far to be convincing.  They're not some 2-bit outfit like you make them out to be.  To suggest that they  ignored one half of this zero-risk profit stream because they got no order from RS is quite comical.

Morgaine.

I have bought three Raspberry PI's.

The longest I had to wait was 3 weeks for one purchased from Allied Electronics. Original delivery was given as 6 to 8 weeks.

While waiting for Allied, Element 14 advertised a 7 day wait so I bought one from them and it was delivered in 3 to 4 days.

When the 512MB version was announced I bought another one from Element 14 that was also delivered in 3 to 4 days.

When actual availability of the Raspberry Pi was first announced I signed up with RS to be notified when I could order one

from them the next day (couldn't get anything done on the first day because the web site was totally slashdoted). To this

day I am still waiting for that notification. In every web post I've read were some one has been waiting months for delivery

and the name of the company they ordered from was mentioned it was RS.

Most fabs usually have many customers. Some of the customers, like Broadcom have more than one type of device being

made. Each customer has a contract for a certain number of all the devices it wants that the fab is expected to produce. If

a fab is running at or near full capacity as you correctly say they try really hard to do they can't just magically turn on "more

capacity" when one of their customers has a large unexpected increase in demand for one of the devices. Unless other

customer(s) can reduce their needs, more time to adjust doesn't help either. Going to another fab to produce the device

requires at least a 6 to 8 month time frame assuming of course you can find one with unused capacity that supports a

compatable fabrication process and the tools you used to design the device.

As for Broadcoms secrecy practices, they are not much different from all of the other ARM SOC sellers. There is enough

information for most of the peripherals to write drivers for them. Graphics accelerators, multimedia accelerators, and DSPs

tend to be the most highly garded because in many cases the IP for them is actually from another company and they are

under a NDA to not release it. In some cases they may just be trying to not get sued for real or imagined (as in troll) patent

violations. Finally, and what I consider the worst reason is for some perceived competitive advantage. As demand for ARM

SOCs increase this veil of secrecy is slowly being lifted. Just a couple of days ago I read about a rumor that the PowerVR

graphics accelerator was going to get oficial support for an open source driver. I have also read that there is official support

from for an open source driver for the Mali graphics accelerator although I have not been able to find it with Google.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

mynameisJim wrote:

 

the fact they don't have their own fab facility will actually increases turn around time as they become a middleman (so to speak) in the process.  They are bound by the fab's schedule which means they really can't adjust an order at the last minute.

 

That's not consistent with Billy's "the people they contract out to have LOTS of capacity, and will make whatever you ask".  Which is it, lots of capacity allowing Broadcom to enjoy a buyer's market, or very restricted capacity making fabrication a seller's market and giving Broadcom little to no options?

 

You're both attempting to substantiate the same conclusion from incompatible premises, so one of you is clearly wrong.  Even if each were true separately, they can't both be true simultaneously.

 

In addition to one of you being necessarily wrong, you're both making out that Broadcom's business planners are incompetent at capitalizing on a massive demand for one of their chips, and that suggests strongly that you're both wrong.  I may not like Broadcom's secrecy practices, but I see no sign that they are incompetent at getting devices made cheaply and in vast numbers, under either of your premises.  If they could make money from this insatiable demand, they would, even if the profit is less than when producing other devices.  It's still profitable for them, and nobody has suggested otherwise (yet).

 

By Occam's Razor, the fact that they aren't making money from it at the rate for which there is demand suggests that they can't do so, because competent business people (which I believe they are) would find a way if it were at all possible.  They've had since the start of March to fully realize the scale of demand and react to it in a way that would capitalize on the world's hunger for an old chip on which their investment has already been recouped, so it's all straight profit.  I do not think they would look this gift horse in the mouth.

 

So, you'll have to find a much stronger reason for the company's apparent inability to knock out large numbers of these SoCs than you have so far to be convincing.  They're not some 2-bit outfit like you make them out to be.  To suggest that they  ignored one half of this zero-risk profit stream because they got no order from RS is quite comical.

 

Morgaine.

*sigh* let's start from the top of your statement.  First you're trying to juxtapose mine and Billy's statements and make them about the same thing when its not.  First you have Billy's statement which is to prove that the issue is not a matter of a lack of capacity to produce the chips.  Your argument has been that B-com lacks the ability to meet the demand of the chip because they cannot produce the chip fast enough, to which Billy has responded that no, they outsource their production to other places, places which can more than meet the demand of any quantity of chips you so desire.

To which you made the response that a higher capacity would by default create shorter response times.  To which I responded no, since they're outsourcing the work it means you'd actually have longer wait times.  Or perhaps a better way of saying that is you have consistent wait times.  You get your shipment every X weeks and you prioritise your fab time to make you the most profit while still meeting customer demand.  Ergo their big money makes would have shorter turn around times and their 1/1000 of a percent of a quarterly earnings chip get's LONG wait times.  You tell your customers up front what the wait time for a product is and the customer orders the amount of product they believe they will need to carry them from one shipment to another.  This is the foundation of a business model.  You try to get enough raw material to meet demand until the next shipment of raw material comes in.  It's been that way with every job I worked with right down to Baskin Robbins.  If we ran out of Vanilla ice cream because we didn't ordered enough the corporate office didn't rush us an extra shippment at a higher price to keep getting that Vanilla revenue.  We had to make do with our poor planning.

You can't just cherry pick statements out of context to try and support your complete lack of experience in this field with two people experienced in their respective areas. 

As for the necessity of one of us being wrong... that would only be correct if your basic underlying assumptions were correct, but unfortunately they are not as anyone who has worked in these lines of work can tell you.  Your line of reasoning would make sense if the chip being discussed was the breadwinner of B-com.  As I stated in an earlier post even if all $35 dollars the pi costs went to B-com, the entire sales of the pi for the whole year wouldn't equal but a hundredth of a percent of the earning b-com made for a quarter.  (based off a Q4 1.82 Billion listed earnings in 2011 on their site).  Of course the reality is I'd be shocked if they even made 5 dollars off every sale of the pi for their chip, ergo the pi sales for a full year represents something in the 1/1000th of a percentage of a lower than usual quarter.

I will agree with you on one fact, and that is that I too believe that they are competent business people, which is why they order only a quantity of such a low revenue chip in exact proportion with what has been ordered.  You try not to overstock on your breadwinners let alone some outdated chip like the BCM2835.  And no, there's no such thing as a zero-risk profit stream.  You're using the wonderful thing called hindsight to see that the pi has been somewhat successful and trying to apply that as common knowledge foresight to the people who ordered the chips months ago.  It just doesn't work that way.  Farnell and RS both ordered chips based off how successful they thought the pi was going to be.  All signs indicate that RS didn't think it would be this successful while Farnell took a risk and invested the cash to give this pi thing a whirl.  Obviously this has worked well for Farnell.

And again, your line of logic that B-com can't build chips quickly enough to meet demand would only work if both RS, Farnell and Roku (well maybe not Roku, but Farnell and RS) experienced equal shortages or if they had rolling shortages with each company have a period where they don't have enough to meet demand but the other company does.  This just hasn't been the case so it doesn't hold up.

I'm afraid we're not going to get anywhere in this discussion if you insist on reasoning that if a company has more fabrication capacity available to it through a buoyant fabrication sector then this implies that it will have longer wait times.  That's not logical, Sir.

When there are many parties able to provide a service then your wait times are inherently shorter because for any given amount of fabrication load in the sector, that load is spread over more fab providers with less queueing, and when you are tendering for service then naturally lead times are one important bargaining point over which there will be competition.  You can expect the average lead times to be lower in a buoyant sector with many providers, not longer.

Now if you want to argue that it's not that simple because different fab providers deal with different technologies then of course I would have to agree with you, it will inevitably reduce the set of providers which a given fabless manufacturer can utilize, but that wasn't what you claimed as far as I can discern.

Our most important point of disagreement isn't really that though.  It's that you seem to insist that it makes perfect sense for Broadcom to do nothing about assisting the non-stop manufacture of BCM2835 devices despite knowing since March the overall levels of interest, despite having an inside route into per-partner demand information through RPF, despite knowing that every chip manufactured in the current months will be sold because solid order queues exist for them, and despite being able to discuss the Foundation's 2013 plans with Eben Upton owing to RPF's intimate interdependency with Broadcom to ensure that there are no surprises ahead.

Instead of noting these special circumstances which create an effectively risk-free environment for BCM2835 manufacture for a certain number of months which Eben can undoubtedly quantify, you insist on treating the SoC orders as some anonymous corporate purchase request over which Broadcom has no knowledge nor control and which therefore results in an unacceptable manufacturing risk.  This just isn't so.  Pi is special.  Pi is as close to being a Broadcom product without officially being one as it gets.  The Pi alpha boards even had Broadcom's mark etched on them.  It's not some anonymous 3rd party that wants these Broadcom SoCs.  It's a family member, pretty much, and you can be confident that communications between the two parties are very close and very good.  Hindsight was not required by Broadcom, they have something far better, a direct channel to the right people and to the information they need to manufacture appropriate volumes safely.

Now because you haven't done so, I'll hypothesize one theoretical risk that might exist, hypothetically.  It might be considered possible that RS would reject any faster supply of SoCs if they were produced and offered to them by Broadcom outside of contract, willing to let their customers wither of old age in the wait queue as long as they don't have to invest more than some predefined $X in Pi manufacture per quarter.  Yes it's theoretically possible, and maybe you were implying that this would constitute a real risk for Broadcom, but is it likely?  (Your allusions to risk did not make the sources of risk clear at all.)

Well I really doubt that even the strongest detractor of RS would claim that there is any significant likelihood of that occurring.  I don't have any particular knowledge of RS, but even if they have some weaknesses, they are nevertheless one of those companies with a long pedigree that gets lumped into "Best of British", and the likelihood of them turning down SoCs to vanquish their backorder queue is remote, in my view, and AFAIK nobody has suggested that that is a real danger.  So from where does the risk and uncertainty that you've implied actually come?  It's really just FUD.  There can be no uncertainty nor doubt about any BCM2835 device manufactured not ending up on Pi boards and getting sold when this is done in concert with RPF as coordinator, and fearmongering about it is not helpful.

Lastly, I want to address your point about how come that Farnell and Roku have not been hit with major shortages as far as we know, but RS has been.  This is the only actual numerical evidence before us whereas everything else has been speculation, even if reasoned speculation, so this is important.  Well of course I don't know, and nor do you, we can only speculate again.  We have however been speculating about it for many months here, and a number of scenarios have been suggested in the past in various threads.

Deliberate under-ordering by RS despite full awareness that the length of its preorder queue would grow has of course been a leading candidate, but it was far from being the only one.  We also noted that because both manufacturers' websites collapsed when Pi was launched and remained in deep trouble for a lengthy period that spanned hours or days depending on who you asked and their location, the rate at which the two services picked up expressions of interest was more in the lap of the gods than balanced.  As a result, it's a very possible scenario that RS picked up many more registrations than Element 14 --- someone had to pick up more than the other after all.

Given an initial imbalance, we then discussed here various possible scenarios under which manufactured Pi boards were allocated to the two partners.  The favoured "equal numbers to both" scenario would have the consequence of  emptying the preorder queue of the partner with the shortest queue first, hence exacerbating an already bad situation.  In contrast, an allocation proportional to the length of each partner's preorder queue would empty them both in the same amount of time, but it was considered unlikely.  In other words, the partner that performed best in the chaos of the launch week and obtained the most registrations would suffer worst from the most likely allocation policy.  Well we know that the initial allocation policy from the first batch was equal numbers to each, so at least initially we know that this very thing must have occurred.  Do we know that it was RS that suffered most?  No, but it seems likely given that RS has always had the longer queue sizes.

So, things are complicated, and I wouldn't rush so fast to the conclusion that RS's problems are entirely a product of their failure with ordering.  It may have all started as a product of their comparative success with registrations, at least initially.  Once their own manufacturing got under way then of course they would have exacerbated their own predicament if they under-ordered or late-ordered, and it's never been denied that that is possible.  Despite RPF's chequered history with information release, nobody here automatically rejects information released by them (at least I don't), but only if there is additional cause to view something with suspicion, and I'm not aware of any such in this case.

Even if RS's problem was entirely a product of their own mis-ordering, it still doesn't eliminate the point that I was making earlier about Broadcom being a joint partner in all of this, and that the good business sense which they possess could have harnessed the extensive third party fabrication capacity that exists in the ARM ecosystem to help reduce backlogs further (not just for RS) without impacting on their more lucrative contracts, given that we've agreed that there is no shortage of external capacity.  I expect we're going to have to disagree on that because you don't want to embrace even tentatively the possibility that Broadcom's involvement with Pi is special and carries litte risk.  So be it.

Morgaine.

Almost everything in Ms Divonas post isn't right. I can't be bothered to quote all of it because its late, but most of her statements would need the use of a crystal ball to make a decision. And I've never got those dingers to work properly.

Face it Morgana, you are wrong here. I know you are finding that difficult to accept, but you have two people who have worked in the industry telling you stuff, and yet you still don't beleive them. Why are you so confident you are right, and the experts are wrong, in the face of so much contrary evidence? You are working from heresay and speculation, and have people giving you facts, and yet, still you thing you are right. That's mucho dingo dudette.

Actually, one point is worth adding - that of excessive capacity in the third party fabs industry. There is a lot of capacity for sure, but not SPARE capacity. If there was spare capacity, there wouldn't  be a long lead time - you could just get in there and use it now. So you can make a hell of a lot of chips, if you book ahead. Which means the alledged shortage now is due to an order not being big enough 3-4 months ago. Since fabless companies in this area are not in the game of making stuff in advance and storing it just in case, the ordering decision back them was underestimated. Which is understandable - who would have expected the demand to still be so high a year after launch. That's pretty unusual.

Billy:  Look up "argument from authority" and "logical fallacy".

Then come back to us with solid reasoning instead of your repeated "It's like this because I'm experienced and I say so."  It's not convincing in an engineering forum.  If you're truly experienced then it should be easy for you to provide a reasoned argument rather than your standard line.

mynameisJim and I have exchanged reasoned arguments without name-calling nor arguing from authority.  We may not agree but it's a logical exchange of views.  Try it, it will stand you in good stead.

Your last paragraph might even have qualified as logical if you hadn't incorporated another logical fallacy, a simple straw man.  "fabless companies in this area are not in the game of making stuff in advance and storing it just in case" is the straw man because it's not "just in case", it's to fulfil the solid and well-known back-orders for Pi held by the manufacturing partners.  I stated that plainly in the preceding post to which you were replying, so you're countering a premise that was never made.

Arguing bitterly over conjecture and idle speculation is surely a sign of a species with too much time on it's hands...

From a manufacturing point of view I have to concur that it makes little sense for a manufacturer (especially one with no actual manufacturing capability) to push an obsolete, low profit item to the head of a carefully planned queue. I would imagine that the main value of the 2835 / Pi thing to Broadcom is in terms of public relations, so possibly a beancounter in a Cambridge office knocked out a cost / benefit analysis a long time ago, while other grey suits got on the trumpet to their pet fabrication subcontractors - only to be given the option of being bent over a barrel. One has to look after one's important customers (and shareholders) first, so unless one can conjure manufacturing capability out of thin air and defy the laws of physics to shrink lead times, somebody is going to have to wait (especially if they didn't order enough in the first place). In fairness, it would have taken a crystal ball rather than a spreadsheet to predict the level of sustained demand that the Pi has seen.

Pretty shonky attitude there, Morgan.

Nothing I've said is wrong, or a straw man argument. And I reckon my experience actually working in this sector and actually knowing what I am talking about  trumps your inconsistent arguments. Don;t give me nonsense about reasoned argument  - you dont need to argue when presented with actual facts. You lost, admit it, or are you incacable of accepting you could be wrong about something. That's not reasoned argument, that being bloody minded.

For example, my statement "fabless companies in this area are not in the game of making stuff in advance and storing it just in case" is completely true and contains no straw shaped man. You in an earlier post stated Broadcom should make a load of chips up front without receiving  orders. I told you this is not the way they work. They make according to the backorders they are told about i.e by the people who actually know the numbers ie RS and Farnell.  They don;t make stuff that hasnt been ordered. They might make stuff up front if they are told by the manufacturer they expect to sell a particular number, but that owuld need to be a multi million chip order, not the small change orders fom the Raspberry Pi foundation. Some chip companies do make to fill warehouses, not companies like Broadcom, that's not their business. I dunno specifics, as I don;t work for any of them, but the only way Broadcom could know the actual order numbers required in the backlog is if RS or Farnell told them, and they way they do that is by ORDERING THEM. So they order enough for the backlog, plus the extra they expect to sell between receipt and the next order time. My guess is the RS completely failed to anticipate the demand would still be high and failed to order enough. Broadcom has exactly the same number of working crystal balls as anyone else, so without numbers from orders, they ain;'t gonna guess how many to make.

Jesus, its the middle of the night and I'm still arguing. People who cannot accept they have lost an argument do my blood pressure no good at all. Dunno why I bother. Must be the beers!

Billy Thornton wrote:

 

Pretty shonky attitude there, Morgan.

Every single post of yours is full of personal comments like that.  Try sticking to the subject and not attacking people but dealing exclusively with what the people say.  Don't refer to me, refer to what I am saying.  This will only cramp your style if you don't have a solid line of reasoning in the first place and therefore rely on abuse and ad hominem.  But if you do actually have something logical and reasoned to say then it will not cramp your posts at all.  Try it.

Billy Thornton wrote:

 

Nothing I've said is wrong, or a straw man argument.

I gave the precise details of your straw man argument, and it's not a matter of dispute because it was in your own words in black and white.  If you try to knock down an argument by adding a premise of your own that was not given and knocking down this new premise then that is the exact definition of a straw man argument.  It isn't a logical counter to what was said, but only a logical counter to the premise which you invented.  Don't do it.