Who is working with the SAM9263?
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From: Jim Granville on 30 Mar 2007 18:26 rickman wrote: >>Surprisingly we sold 100s of the AT91RM9200DK at $5000 >>just in my region. Sales volume improved with the AT91RM9200EK >>but not dev tools revenue. >>You do have people thinking a lot before making that investment >>but I am only aware of one project which I lost mainly due to toolcost. >>The decision was delayed and delayed and then something happened >>which I believed would not have happened if they have had the tools >>in house. > > > That is not the only measure of the business you can loose from having > high priced evaluation tools. very true. >>> At $69 people will buy it just to play >>>with it and see how it runs even if they don't have a need. >>>Even better would be a design contest. >> >>I bet that people coming to Atmel Seminars will be able >>to go home with an AVR32 kit. >>This is by far the best way to distribute the kits. > > > BINGO! I can assure you that there is very little difference between > the LPC2xxx and the SAM7xx parts. But much of the LPC business came > from the very low cost units that are out there. I watched it grow > and much of it was due to the feedback between the availability of > cheap eval tools and the grassroots popularity of the chips. Each one > fed the other with very rapid growth. There are still any number of > vendors who only provide LPC eval boards and not Atmel. I only know > of one vendor who provides Atmel support and not NXP. A large part of that is NXP was first with single chip FLASH, whilst for a while all Atmel had were the external memory ARMs. I think Atmel's "release rate" is now above NXP. > > You may get wins at the customers who show on your radar. But there > are any number of customers who select a part for a design before you > know anything about them and it is not infrequent that these projects > are with large customers. I know because I have seen it happen. > Decisions are made without input from the vendor largely based on what > the engineer is familiar with. Low cost eval tools help a great deal > in getting the customer familiar with the parts with a minimum of > management review. Yes, and the $69 AVR32 kit, looks a good way to do that. Another important aspect of such low cost Eval kits, is as "hardware data sheets" - as they come with tools, it can be quicker to load and measure performance, than trying to find the info-detail you want, in all the literature sources. > >>> Is Atmel not marketing the ARM9 parts as hard as they are the AVR32? Looks to me like they are being careful to release the FLASH models at exactly the same time: ARM9 and AVR32 >> >>The ARM9 parts at least get a lot of *my* attention. >>I quite often go into a customer which has *almost* decided >>to go with an LPC; and then show the SAM9260. >> >>If a customer is planning to use external memory, then it will >>be very hard for them to resist that little goodie. >>The pin compatible flash version, the SAM9XE, should >>make NXP and ST cry and trash their performance graphs. >>While the flash is not significantly faster, you can loop >>in the cache, and use the TCM for 4-5 x performance boost. >> >>NXP does not have anything which comes close to the 9260 >>The LPC3xxx does not have ethernet and a lot of other goodies >>present on the 9260 and the ST ARM9 part is a two chip solution >>which should not have too much higher performance than an ARM7. > > > So you are saying that you don't provide low cost solutions because > you don't need to? Ulf said the ARM and AVR divn's were separate until recently, and you'll see the AVR32 is a bottom-up growth chip - that Divn has the AVR 8 bit volumes, and mindset, and they apply it to the AVR32 - with the new FlASH AVR32's I expect this will accelerate. The AVR32 part is still very new. The ARMs from Atmel have been a top-down product. ASICs, then Microprocessors, and more recently Microcontroller versions - so that's a different mindset. It takes time in large companies for these mindsets to cross-pollinate, and for the lower price kits to get on the radar. Probably not much engineering cost to swap the AVR32 in their Eval PCB, to an ARM9 ?. Identical PCB with swapped CPUs could be a nice benchmarking tool... -jg
From: Ulf Samuelsson on 30 Mar 2007 18:40 > A large part of that is NXP was first with single chip FLASH, whilst > for a while all Atmel had were the external memory ARMs. > > I think Atmel's "release rate" is now above NXP. > I see quite often you can convert an LPC2xxx part to a you rarely see that someone switches from a SAM to an LPC >> So you are saying that you don't provide low cost solutions because >> you don't need to? > > Ulf said the ARM and AVR divn's were separate until recently, > and you'll see the AVR32 is a bottom-up growth chip - that > Divn has the AVR 8 bit volumes, and mindset, and they apply > it to the AVR32 - with the new FlASH AVR32's I expect this will > accelerate. The AVR32 part is still very new. > > The ARMs from Atmel have been a top-down product. ASICs, then > Microprocessors, and more recently Microcontroller versions - > so that's a different mindset. > > It takes time in large companies for these mindsets to cross-pollinate, > and for the lower price kits to get on the radar. Right. > Probably not much engineering cost to swap the AVR32 in their Eval PCB, to > an ARM9 ?. Identical PCB with swapped CPUs could be a nice benchmarking > tool... > Right now it is terribly expensive. That needs to change... -- Best Regards, Ulf Samuelsson This is intended to be my personal opinion which may, or may not be shared by my employer Atmel Nordic AB
From: Jim Granville on 30 Mar 2007 20:06 Ulf Samuelsson wrote: >>Probably not much engineering cost to swap the AVR32 in their Eval PCB, to >>an ARM9 ?. Identical PCB with swapped CPUs could be a nice benchmarking >>tool... >> > > > Right now it is terribly expensive. That needs to change... I was meaning take the AVR32 kit design, and swap the chip for an ARM9 - that's probably about 1-2 days work, which should be very cheap ? - then, they can even share the same production line, and you can even split-volume them on the same Pick and place file. -jg
From: rickman on 30 Mar 2007 21:12 On Mar 30, 6:05 pm, "Ulf Samuelsson" <u...(a)a-t-m-e-l.com> wrote: > I think that Atmel can live with $500 board for the ARM9 at the moment > but the reason is really the underlying cost structure. > If/when competition catches up, then this will become a more > important decision factor. > > I think that prices will come down before they are needed for this reason > though. I won't argue all the little details even though I disagree. But your ARM9 eval boards are not $500. I would consider that marginally acceptable. But they are much higher. The single lowest cost board is $600, the rest are $1000 or more. You (or your company) assume that your chip will get the chance to be evaluated on all major projects. There are any number of engineers who pick parts based solely on familiarity even for large jobs at large companies. My last position required that I learn to push vendors away when I did not need info. I learned that all the larger companies learn to do that. Another factor is the threshold of approval. If I need a manager to sign off on a purchace it makes it that much harder to do. If I need a second level manager that means I typically have to justify it in writing. Likewise, if I ask my rep for a freebie, it is much more likely to happen with a $200 board (I got those often) than with a $1000 or even a $600 board. My point is that the view from inside your company is not necessarily the same as the view from inside the customer's company.
From: Ulf Samuelsson on 31 Mar 2007 01:49
"rickman" <gnuarm(a)gmail.com> skrev i meddelandet news:1175303533.327043.45800(a)d57g2000hsg.googlegroups.com... > On Mar 30, 6:05 pm, "Ulf Samuelsson" <u...(a)a-t-m-e-l.com> wrote: >> I think that Atmel can live with $500 board for the ARM9 at the moment >> but the reason is really the underlying cost structure. >> If/when competition catches up, then this will become a more >> important decision factor. >> >> I think that prices will come down before they are needed for this reason >> though. > > I won't argue all the little details even though I disagree. But your > ARM9 eval boards are not $500. I would consider that marginally > acceptable. But they are much higher. The single lowest cost board > is $600, the rest are $1000 or more. Yes, this is the result of the high cost base. Need volume, and I have been working on a proposal which will allow volumes to increase, and thus price should go down. > You (or your company) assume that your chip will get the chance to be > evaluated on all major projects. There are any number of engineers > who pick parts based solely on familiarity even for large jobs at > large companies. My last position required that I learn to push > vendors away when I did not need info. I learned that all the larger > companies learn to do that. I know that I don't get a chance to be evaluated on all major projects. I also know that if I get a chance to discuss with the customer before decision, Atmel gets about 50-75% hit rate on AT91 parts. I.E: visits results in design wins more often than not. Quite often it is due to selling ARM9 vs ARM7. > Another factor is the threshold of approval. If I need a manager to > sign off on a purchace it makes it that much harder to do. If I need > a second level manager that means I typically have to justify it in > writing. Likewise, if I ask my rep for a freebie, it is much more > likely to happen with a $200 board (I got those often) than with a > $1000 or even a $600 board. I am well aware of the TV-Shop paradigm... If you get a kit free of charge, do you really care if it cost $200 or $5000? You assume that pricey kits cannot be had free of charge. I dont understand why not, if the business case is right. The problem only occurs if you don't get the kit free of charge. > My point is that the view from inside your company is not necessarily > the same as the view from inside the customer's company. > > -- Best Regards, Ulf Samuelsson This is intended to be my personal opinion which may, or may not be shared by my employer Atmel Nordic AB |