Actually, I work for a major contract manufacturer (3rd largest in the world) and we repair pcbs all the time. Replacing components is much cheaper than scrapping a $30000US board. I've even seen wire-adds to fix missing or broken traces on boards, although those are much less common. So yeah we need to keep those chips labelled for just such occasions.
I apologise - the ep9312 is $43.46 (single chip) not $50 - check insight electronics. As for the 20 bucks, you're right, 20 bucks is for low low volumes. it does get way cheaper for more. You're also right about the cost of the decoder being included - but i believe the 25 cents from each chip goes top fraunhoffer as royalty. i could be wrong though. Lastly - the 9312 includes the maverick crunch engine which afaik does floating point.
sorry for the boldness. looks like i forgot to close a tag. Preview damnit preview!
Re:The author of that article needs some cheese...
on
The Future of Ogg Vorbis
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· Score: 4, Informative
I totally agree. As the hardware developer on a portable mp3 player I can tell you that unless you want to use a hardware decoder (the MAS... chip) and get locked into a particular format (MP3) you're need an software implementation sans floating point. While it is possible to get embedded proc's with floating point capability, the price is simply not worth it in most cases. For instance an EP7312 with no floating point costs about $20, an EP9312 with floating point costs more like $50. Which is why small companies with a low budget like mine choose the cheaper proc's. We are totally open to supporting Ogg, but our first release will support MP3 only because we do have a free library that runs on our proc and runs on it well (well we pay 25 cents per player to Fraunhoffer, but I think that's entirely reasonable)
I'm rather hoping that if this does pass, they'll leave regular hard disks (i.e. ones not in mp3 players) alone. I'm currently developing a handheld mp3 player using a notebook dirve, and if this passes, we'll just redesign the case to allow the user to insert his/her own notebook drive. The player will ship empty, thus I won't be paying a tariff.
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Actually, I work for a major contract manufacturer (3rd largest in the world) and we repair pcbs all the time. Replacing components is much cheaper than scrapping a $30000US board. I've even seen wire-adds to fix missing or broken traces on boards, although those are much less common. So yeah we need to keep those chips labelled for just such occasions.
I apologise - the ep9312 is $43.46 (single chip) not $50 - check insight electronics. As for the 20 bucks, you're right, 20 bucks is for low low volumes. it does get way cheaper for more. You're also right about the cost of the decoder being included - but i believe the 25 cents from each chip goes top fraunhoffer as royalty. i could be wrong though. Lastly - the 9312 includes the maverick crunch engine which afaik does floating point.
Cost of portable mp3 player ~$100US
Cost of licensing decoder $0.25US
What the hell do I care if my costs go up down 25 cents per player?
sorry for the boldness. looks like i forgot to close a tag. Preview damnit preview!
I totally agree. As the hardware developer on a portable mp3 player I can tell you that unless you want to use a hardware decoder (the MAS... chip) and get locked into a particular format (MP3) you're need an software implementation sans floating point. While it is possible to get embedded proc's with floating point capability, the price is simply not worth it in most cases. For instance an EP7312 with no floating point costs about $20, an EP9312 with floating point costs more like $50. Which is why small companies with a low budget like mine choose the cheaper proc's. We are totally open to supporting Ogg, but our first release will support MP3 only because we do have a free library that runs on our proc and runs on it well (well we pay 25 cents per player to Fraunhoffer, but I think that's entirely reasonable)
I'm rather hoping that if this does pass, they'll leave regular hard disks (i.e. ones not in mp3 players) alone. I'm currently developing a handheld mp3 player using a notebook dirve, and if this passes, we'll just redesign the case to allow the user to insert his/her own notebook drive. The player will ship empty, thus I won't be paying a tariff.
Did I mention I hate the government?