P2 Cost
ajward
Posts: 1,130
in Propeller 2
Hi Guys...
I've not been following this thread closely cuz the discussions seem to go way far into the workings of the chip and beyond my grasp of how it all works. Still... seems like a significant upgrade over the P1.
So... I have no idea of what I would use the P2 for, but I feel I gotta have one. Any Idea of a ballpark of the price for the critter once it comes out?
Yes I know there is a lot up in the air yet, but... some speculation?
Thanks.
@
I've not been following this thread closely cuz the discussions seem to go way far into the workings of the chip and beyond my grasp of how it all works. Still... seems like a significant upgrade over the P1.
So... I have no idea of what I would use the P2 for, but I feel I gotta have one. Any Idea of a ballpark of the price for the critter once it comes out?
Yes I know there is a lot up in the air yet, but... some speculation?
Thanks.
@
Comments
I've thought the same but there's no point in substantially reducing the cost of P1 since legacy designs always have to pay a premium or upgrade. So eventually the P1 will be obsolete as there is no point in further production runs just as there is no point in doing QFN for instance at present. In that case if you want to use them it will be like so many other obsolete parts where you can buy them from those "sources" for many more dollars than you care. This won't happen overnight but it will happen. Anybody want to buy some SX48 chips?
Support does not mean price competitive of course. If the P1 was price competitive with the P2 then they would be selling P1s for less than 50 cents apiece! Of course too Parallax will be trying to keep the price of the P2 low enough for marketing reasons, much as they lowered the original $20 price of P1 for marketing reasons in the hope that the lower price would be offset by a much larger volume. So when P2 comes out then P1 volumes will drop so it is unlikely that P1 prices will drop much or if at all.
Want low power operation, for example?
If it were me, I would drop P1 a little bit, but not very much. It's not really warranted.
I would have P2 come in at higher than P1 as well. Does not need to be a lot, but there is a significant investment there. It's reasonable to ask for some to begin to pay that down.
P1 employs PLL, P2 employs NCO too. Those differences may matter to some people.
IMHO, low power is a big one. Enough to keep the parts differentiated.
DIP was already "deprecated" when the P1 came out in 2006, how much more so now? Besides, putting the P2 or even the P1 onto a plug-in module along with support chips and caps etc makes much more sense for prototyping. I noticed that octal sockets are getting harder to get
* Low Power
* Smaller package (DIP40 or QFP44)
* Single power supply 3V3
P2 has different advantages.
IMHO there will be a continuing market for both chips.
-Phil
Other vendors generally do not lower the price of older lines, when a new line is released, and that means their mature parts commonly have a worst price metric than the hot-new-device.
I expect Parallax to have reasonable ideas of the wafer-based price content, but I also think they have far less idea, right now, about the other important final-price elements of Testing Time and Yields.
Cost recovery is a Volume * Margin equation, so you can make more money from a lower price point, if you sell more.
Getting early design wins is going to be very important for P2 to hit critical mass.
One simple marketing technique I see Altera use, is to have just one disti price.
Pop over to Digikey and search for CPLD, and you find the MAX-V parts from 5M40ZE64C5N have a single price of $0.90, no volume columns.
That is a simple way to break some psychological price barrier, and encourage design wins.
Certainly the price and early availability of good P2 eval board(s) is going to be critical.
No one is going to be able to knock up a quick test on a bare P2 chip, and other vendors have Eval modules even sub $10, not to mention RaspPi Zeros at $5 & $10 price points.
Some eval boards are $20-$30, but usually those have 'something extra' - eg SiLabs add a Graphics LCD & good Debug, the Parallax FLiP adds some comprehensive power supply and protection features.
At a 100 dollars they would never sell any P2. At ten dollars they might start to move. At one dollar they might fly off the shelf.
Of course at either extreme it's not worth doing. No sales, no return. Or many sales. no return.
Then there is the small issue of all the billions of other devices competing to do whatever it is people mind think of using a P2 for. Available at ever decreasing cost.
More mainstream... show the 8051 has both old and new offerings.
Microchip offer 8051 from 55c/1k for newest parts, to $12.55/1k for more mature ones
SiLabs offer 8051 from 33c to $17.57/1k for more mature, larger package ones.
Cheapest 20 pin 8051 on mainstream website offer, is Nuvoton N76E003AT20 $0.227/1k
& Asian website docs indicate 0.60 yuan (sub US$0.10) for upcoming 8-pin 8051 offerings.
The newest 8051's are looking very much the lowest-cost 8 bit leaders.
Flipping this search from 'cheapest little MCU', to a much more P2 relevant question
"How many Stocked MCUs in 100-176 pins are > $6/1k" ?
That package sort finds 2,356 items, and
200 devices in, > $16.50/1k
400 devices in, > $12.32
~ 600 devices in, price breaks $10.00
1000 devices in, > $8.07
1300 devices in, > $7.05
1625 devices in, we are at ~$6.01
ie close to 70% of the stocked parts in that package area, are above $6.00, and even a P2 price point of ~$7.50/1k would see ~50% above that.
Cheapest is a Toshiba part at $1.75/1k with 512F/32KR/TQFP100, but they quite quickly climb over $3
As for whether to charge $8/10/12, Chip and Ken and team will decide, and the market will chime in indirectly. But while the Prop 2 is certainly worth an extra buck or two, if not ten, for hobbyists and designers integrating it into low-volume projects, there's no telling what "damage" such a higher price could do to the Propeller long-term, as it might put off some from considering the chip. That in turn might prevent it from ever getting a "critical mass" of users and applications. Yes, the price is certainly justifiable for many of us, but any price increase comes at a cost and with a big risk, the risk being that it might not catch on nearly as much as it has the potential to do so. Of course, Ken has already identified the primary audience for Propellers (and it's usually not the users that need hundreds of thousands or millions of chips), so it can bear a higher price than your standard ARM chip, but not without limit. Obviously, Parallax already figured this out for the Prop 1 when they lowered the price (and if they hadn't, it's possible that the Prop 1 wouldn't even be available). So, while I can certainly see a $12 price, it increases the risk of the Prop 2 not catching on. As such, I'm encouraged that Parallax is considering quite reasonable pricing. That is, they could charge more, even gouge those that definitely need the chip, but they don't plan on doing so, nor would it likely be in their interest to do so. And aside from making money and covering the engineering/design costs--which is a necessity for the Prop 2's long-term survival--I think Chip wants to have an impact on the world, directly and indirectly fostering invention. After all, when it's all said and done, we don't take the money with us (though it can be passed on to loved ones in a will), but its nice to have had an impact on the world for the better. That's likely a secondary or tertiary consideration in a pricing discussion, if it's relevant at all, but, again, if the chip is priced out of the market, the impact of the chip will be limited, as will the proceeds that can be derived from the chip from sales.
You know, word of mouth advertising travels best of all, and a person that uses the Prop 2 in a personal design (paying whatever for it in single or small quantities) is sometimes a person who will recommend it at work or tell a friend. A $15 price, for example, has a much higher likelihood of scaring off such a potential buyer, or, such a person might not have heard of the chip at that price due to a small critical mass, such a critical mass including not just the number of chips out in the field but also the range of products/applications using the chip and type and number of code objects available for it. Again, I really think Chip/Ken/Team have a good handle on this already. They've figured it out, because, as I recall, both of them have mentioned a similar pricing range on multiple occasions. They've identified, or at least zeroed in on, the sweet spot, at least as much as is possible prior to the actual release of silicon. So, I think I might think twice about encouraging them to feel free to increase the price (not that our pricing suggestions are the deciding factor), and the same thing could be said for lowering the estimated price. I like the range they're already in, and they're there for a reason (well, many reasons, in fact).
The price has two main components, actual cost to manufacture and R&D cost. The first determines the minimum price, and it was my understanding that this will not be all that high for P2. The second combined with how fast they want to recover costs and their projected volume determine the actual price.
If they project a decent volume, then they can afford a lower price and still recover R&D costs in a reasonable time frame.
In any case, the singles price is somewhat less important than the volume cost as far as R&D recovery is concerned. So it's probably beneficial to make that as low as feasible, while picking a good balance for the volume prices.
Raw cost to Parallax for the die only is more than double this. Only way is to produce tens of millions pa.
Then they don't need the P3, they can just start buying any recent low cost FPGA (like Max 10, Cyclone 10 LP, or ICE40) with embedded RAM, internal DDR3 controller, multipliers, ADC, and on and on ... starting from around $2 to $30.
I just only need a P1 at < $1. But I guess that in the next 3 years we will have a 'Max 12' at $2.50 (single quantities) with all the above things and I no longer will need the P1 anymore.
(Currently price for Max 10 10M02 [without DDR controller] is $2 at 100 pcs.) 1Q 2017
A Max 10 10M02 is never going to do what a P1 does!!!