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Update: Raspberry Pi-Compatible Development Board Cancelled

Posted by samzenpus on from the not-so-fast dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Anyone who might have been interested in the miniature Raspberry Pi compatible board mentioned here a month ago should know the board has been cancelled due to problems sourcing the Broadcom SoC. Given the less than welcoming response from the rpi community to the board's release, there is speculation as to why Hardkernel is having trouble buying the chip.

4 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Broadcom won't release documentation ever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I used to work at Sun Microsystems and had to deal with Broadcom chips in the servers. In order to get access to Hardware Reference Manuals, I almost was compelled to sign away rights to my 1st *and* 2nd born. Broadcom does not want anyone to be able to write drivers to their hardware ever, unless you pay them a huge royalty.

  2. Broadcom don't deal with little guys by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've worked with Broadcom chips in some circumstances in my job as an embedded software engineer. It's seldom been pleasant.

    They won't even talk to a little player, or anyone else who is unlikely to place an order for large numbers of chips. I know of tier-2 telecommunications equipment companies - well-known names - who were turned down by Broadcom. Even if you are a big player, technical support is even harder to get. They make you sign NDAs for every little thing. I saw this becoming an issue with the Raspberry Pi when it came out a few years ago as there was no documentation for the graphics hardware.

    It's just the way they do business. I think they're about volume rather than margin. They're not even vaguely interested in enthusiasts or small scale jobs.

    My favourite supplier is Freescale. They make almost all their documentation and software public, and you can buy their chips singly in the channel if you want. I have a suspicion that Intel (who are showing in interest in this market) and Atmel would probably also be very helpful.

    Best advice to a small project like this is very much as follows : don't bother with Broadcom. They don't want your business.

  3. Why. by queazocotal · · Score: 5, Informative

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
    Eben Christopher Upton is a Technical Director and ASIC architect for Broadcom. He is also a founder and former trustee of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and now CEO of the Raspberry PI trading company.[4] He is also responsible for the overall software and hardware architecture of the Raspberry Pi device.[5][6]

  4. That's open source by Enry · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Here's what one person said about it:
     

    What I don't like about this project is that they simply use all the work (software development) of the foundation and the RPi community to sell their product. They call it "compatibility" but in fact it means: let other people do all the work and we make money from it.

    Someone is new to open source/designs I see. Arduino has a bazillion knockoffs that are compatible yet they still seem to be doing okay. Unless RPi isn't an open architecture - in which case, why do we advocate its use?