The CHIP Is a $9 Computer That Can Almost Do It All

http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/08/the-chip-is-a-9-computer-that-can-almost-do-it-all/

by Errorcod3 • 11 years ago

164 66 11 years ago

techcrunch.com

adricnet• 11 years ago

I backed the Kickstarter. Looks like a really neat device with interesting capabilities and Debian :)

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598272670/chip-the-wor...

mplewis• 11 years ago

They're claiming better specs than the RPi Model A (512 MB RAM, 1 GHz CPU) with more features (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi on board) for $9 vs the RPi's $25.

I highly doubt they will be able to produce the CHIP for $9/unit.

jbhatab• 11 years ago

I was thinking the exact same thing. Sounds great! Hope they pull it off, but RPi has been committed to cost reduction since day one and I'd be surprised if they could just undercut them like that. Hopefully I'm missing something.

I will say that the design is much smaller and minimal so maybe all the fancy addon removal will help cost. But then you have to pay for boards and stuff anyway.

bravo226• 11 years ago

As do I. They might be able to pull it off with discounts from their suppliers but I imagine it is difficult to build a sustainable business around that price.

Even assuming 20K volumes:

Current market price for 4GB of flash is about $2.50[1]; 512MB of RAM is about $2[1]. Processor -- even if something like A33 -- would be about $4. You have another $2 of regulator, connectors, etc. The PCB is about $1.75 in volume and assembly would be $1. That's $13.25.

Even if somehow they manage to make this thing really really cheap and get below that price, let's assume $7 or 50% of magical discount on top of current volume pricing, that's not much margin. Even if you sell 100K of these a year (which is very high) you've made only 200K in profit!

EDIT: I forgot about BLE+WiFI -- add $4!

Some are saying PCB pricing is high: I'm basing that on 2.3"x3.3" 6 layer board with 8 mils holes, and 4 mil clearance and ENIG finish.

[1] I'm basing this on recent 50K purchases but here is a more public source: http://www.dramexchange.com/

pruth• 11 years ago

I'm interested to know where these estimates come from. You can get PCBs for much cheaper in Shenzhen.

Source : A rough quote from http://www.sz-jlc.com/ came out to $0.15 for less than 10k boards

sajal83• 11 years ago

They are using much older A13 which retails for $3 on aliexpress...

bri3d5• 11 years ago

They're using AllWinner A13, which is quite old now. There's a good chance that since they mention frequently "working closer with AllWinner," AllWinner are dumping their old A13 stock onto CHIP at fire-sale prices, or that AllWinner are moving A13 even further downmarket.

I think your PCB and assembly costs are a bit high, as well.

I agree that their margins can't be good.

cperciva• 11 years ago

Current market price...

Remember that they're not going to be shipping for a year. I'm guessing prices will come down over that time.

joshvm• 11 years ago

Loss leader? They're also selling a load of (presumably) high markup accessories like the display adaptors and the PocketC.H.I.P. which is apparently worth $40.

agumonkey• 11 years ago

It's not improbable either, the board is far simpler, less connectors, and the rpi SoC is old.

irl_zebra2• 11 years ago

Even a bluetooth or wifi dongle costs more than $9 retail! I just really don't see how this is possible, although that more than doubles to add an HDMI port.

JosephRedfern• 11 years ago

Is it possible that the price of the CHIP is being subsidised by sales for VGA/HDMI shields?

bravo226• 11 years ago

WiFi + BLE combo would be about $4 in volume.

jbuzbee• 11 years ago

$9 for a bluetooth dongle? how about 99 cents with free shipping and you can find the same for wifi:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mini-USB-Bluetooth-Wireless-Adapter-...

nraynaud3• 11 years ago

nope, they won't, but they are selling overpriced accessories next to the chip, it's just a gillette system.

bri3d5• 11 years ago

Note that the CHIP doesn't have HDMI output built in and that with the HDMI daughterboard, it's right back into RPi cost territory.

Also, on the flip side of cost comparison, low-quality Allwinner-based tablets are easily available at under $30 on AliExpress.

throwaway9324• 11 years ago

People havn't been paying attention. This market isn't about selling an 8$ thing for 9, 12 or 15. It's about selling a 1$ thing for 10 and a 4$ thing for 40. Which they probably are with the accessories.

noonespecial• 11 years ago

I'm famously skeptical of this sort of thing. I was just as skeptical of the RasPi when I first heard of it.

I was pleasantly surprised by the materialization of the RasPi despite their troubles getting production started.

That said, I think this is a pipe dream. Its SO easy to hack together a prototype and then look at the volume discounted total of the BOM and think you've got a product. The most common mistake is to give yourself a "generous" 20% profit over the estimated cost of materials when really it should be more like 300% just to be viable.

I suspect they'll discover soon enough that $20-$30 is a minimum realistic retail sale price for this item.

SoapSeller• 11 years ago

Hmm, It's 9$ for the bare board, no hdni/vga. The charge 15 for the adapter which should cost much less to produce.

Also, it's look like allwinner's version of broadcom's rpi, so they mught get the various chips dirty cheap.

pjc50• 11 years ago

Connectors are surprisingly expensive compared to silicon. Especially if they're not reflow-compatible.

detaro• 11 years ago

From the makezine blog coverage (http://makezine.com/2015/05/07/next-thing-co-releases-worlds...)

How an industry giant and a tiny startup came to partner on a sub-$10 computing device owes to Next Thing’s history developing products and business connections with Shenzhen-based accelerator HAXLR8R, says Dave Rauchwerk, one of Next Thing’s three founders. “Once they understood what we were trying to do, they supported us fully.”

Connecting with the right company wasn’t the only break the Oakland-based team had going for them. At the same time they were meeting with Allwinner and explaining their aspirations for a dirt-cheap computer, Allwinner was looking to redesign their successful A13 processor in a new, smaller form factor as a cheaper system-on-chip. It is this new chip, called the R8, that Next Thing received early access to and used in its board design.

ChuckMcM• 11 years ago

I tend to agree, only because the Bluetooth guys are kind of a PITA when it comes to calling stuff "bluetooth" (when I last checked they wanted either a big annual membership investment or a per system royalty deal). Of course I don't know if you can call it "similar to the wireless protocol your phone uses to talk to headphones" and get away with it.

Reading Bunnie's blog about the ecosystem in China though I doubt AllWinner cares. They are certainly in the "Why ask permission? Is weird! Hey look how cheap this is?" camp.

dmitrygr• 11 years ago

The CPU they use is famous for lack of GPL sources and lack of stability when using their GPL-non-compliant binary blobs

YMWV! (Your mileage WILL vary)

bri3d5• 11 years ago

Additionally, they use ARM Mali GPU IP which is much less open and has far lower-quality drivers (IMHO) than the VideoCore GPU used on Raspberry Pi and friends.

pcwalton3• 11 years ago

I've had a lot more trouble with VideoCore IV drivers than Mali. In my experience VideoCore has massive overhead on each call to glDrawElements(), making it almost unusable for even small numbers of render state changes. When trying to work around that by batching more aggressively, I ended up with more than a half dozen or so varyings, which caused the drivers to happily crash the entire board.

JustGotHere• 11 years ago

Wouldn't this be a chance for drivers to get better?

pcwalton3• 11 years ago

The Mali is shipping in a ton of consumer smartphones and tablets already. A small amount of additional market share from development boards isn't going to make the driver problem better.

rjsw2• 11 years ago

TBF, the Allwinner SoCs also have 2D graphics controllers that are documented, most SoCs these days are 3D only.

nraynaud3• 11 years ago

can we get all the programming docs including the register maps of all the IPs on the chip? that would change everything compared to a Raspberry pi, where a lot of stuff is under NDA.

edit: I might be asking a lot, since, there is even a wikipedia page on how to find and read the docs for ARM, so I guess, it will be, as usual a giant mess of docs spread everywhere.

karmakaze2• 11 years ago

The product shot is rather contrived. An actual CRT using composite video juxtaposed with wireless dual analog joystick controllers.

kondro• 11 years ago

I think composite video is built into the chip.

karmakaze2• 11 years ago

This is true. Who today has a CRT that they care to use? Perhaps the $9 price tag or $24 with HDMI product is contrived.

If it had Ethernet or USB, it might be useful for experimenting with distributed systems.

bcg1• 11 years ago

"The CHIP Is a fictional $9 Computer That doesn't exist and Can Almost Do Nothing At All"

Just in case someone feels like fixing the headline.

mintplant• 11 years ago

I'm more interested in the PocketCHIP than anything else. For a while now I've been trying to find a handheld computer (with a physical keyboard) that won't break the bank. But I'm worried about the quality of the CHIP itself... guess I'll see how this pans out first.

Splendor• 11 years ago

Agreed. I would be very interested in something like an updated version of the Peek device.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peek_%28mobile_Internet_device%...

ansible2• 11 years ago

The last good one that I know of was the Sidekick 4G from Samsung. Great keyboard. In sure you can get a used one cheap these days. Put Connectbot on it and you've got a small handheld terminal.

Another option is the Motorola Photon Q.

fragmede• 11 years ago

Motorola Photon Q.

Sadly, that was already old when it was released as new in 2012. Given 3 years of wear and tear, I was sad when I finally had to trade mine in for a keyboard-less glass brick.

nilleo2• 11 years ago

Same here. I was thinking that it would be perfect to use for some on-the-go projects, no immediate ideas come to mind outside of possibly a new way to sniff out some CAN messages in a car, but it would be one more tool to have available should a need arise. I too am going to wait to see where it goes, for now, I'm at least willing to give the CHIP itself a try to free up my Pi in less demanding applications.

mrb2• 11 years ago

A lot of people wonder how this can be done for $9, but as it was pointed out tablets based on the same specs (A13 SoC, 4GB storage, 512MB RAM) can already be found starting at $30 [1]. Take off the display, case, battery, camera, cable, charger, and yes it is certain the CHIP can be manufactured for approximately $9.

Also keep in mind the company doesn't need to make profits selling the CHIP itself. Their business plan seems to be to sell it at cost while making money on the plethora of accessories: the LiPO battery is $10, the VGA Adapter is $10, the HDMI adapter is $15, etc. Also they might try to make a $0.50 or $1.00 profit here and there on shipping costs (the FAQ even has an entry "international shipping is too expensive").

Enjoy your $9 computer. 15 years ago a machine with these specs would have cost 1 month of an engineer's salary... I love technological progress!

[1] http://www.ebay.com/itm/7-A13-Single-Core-8GB-Google-Android...

noblethrasher• 11 years ago

Enjoy your $9 computer. 15 years ago a machine with these specs would have cost 1 month of an engineer's salary... I love technological progress!

I was about to dispute that statement, because I remember that used Dell Latitude C600 laptops (with 512 RAM and 20 GB HDD) were going for about $700 on eBay around 2002. But, that same laptop cost over $4000 just two years prior. So, indeed, that could have been a month's wages for an engineer. Still, it's amazing that something can go from "prohibitively expensive" to "impulse buy" in the span of 3 years.

mrb2• 11 years ago

For comparable specs, on top of the $4000 you need to add:

- 4GB of solid-state storage. This alone was $4000 for 4GB in 2000: http://www.jcmit.com/flash2014.htm

- Wireless adapter. They were very rare and expensive back in 2000 but I can't find exact price information

silasb• 11 years ago

No one here is talking about the PocketChip, which I think is the coolest thing. If it's hackable it will be really interesting to see what people do with it.

nilleo2• 11 years ago

I totally agree. When looking at the Kickstarter campaign and reading through the content my thoughts were "neat" but I wasn't particularly excited. When I got to PocketCHIP part however, I thought "oh that's kinda cool I guess", and then my hoarder side starting thinking "oooo think of the possibilities of a packaged, portable computer like this!".

I'll definitely be keeping an eye on how the PocketCHIP turns out.

cwyers• 11 years ago

The CHIP has already blown past its $50,000 goal and is now at about $200,000. They expect to ship in one year and they’re a Haxlr8r company so they have some solid manufacturing support.

TechCrunch, why on earth do you think I know what "a Haxlr8r company" is?

anigbrowl• 11 years ago

I hadn't heard of it either but I found it easy to guess, and Google is only a moment away.

(One Moment later) Yep, just as I thought: a HArdware aCCeLRATOR, like YC but for hardware.

jgome• 11 years ago

The anonabox was criticized for, among other reasons, having the "open-source hardware" logo... its hardware was as "open-source" as of this, yet I can't see the criticisms in this case.

ralmidani• 11 years ago

I wonder if this would make a good server. Aside from storage, it has specs comparable to a $5/month Digital Ocean droplet: https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/

jasiek• 11 years ago

It's actually $29 per unit with shipping. Nothing to see here, move along. At $9 a piece they would make very little on each board.

bravo226• 11 years ago

Dug up some details on the R8 used in the CHIP. It doesn't look like it'll have much juice. There are comparable chips out there (made by Atmel for example) in terms of speed/performance.

Single Cortex-A8 (don't disclose cache sizes) DDR2/3 up to 530MHz 16-bit bus 512MB Max capacity Support NAND/SPI Nor/SD Card 1080p30 decode, 720p30 encode H.264

They don't disclose the clock but can't imagine it is high.

[1] http://www.allwinnertech.com/en/clq/R_series/2015/0514/6066....

The CHIP Is a $9 Computer That Can Almost Do It All

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