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Comment by ryao | Hacker News Reader

Why are wifi ICs so expensive? It seems to me that it is cheaper to buy an ESP32 to connect to a RP2040 for wifi than it is to buy a dedicated wifi IC.

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The wifi protocol is computationally intensive. The wifi module is effectively a fast 32-bit computer with fairly complex firmware. And then, there's all the RF engineering that needs to happen to make it work.

So, the original thinking was "if you need wifi, we can't price a standalone chip competitively, just buy a SoC". But the genius of ESP32 was that they approached it the other way round: they built a wifi chip, and then figured they can carve out some room for user code. No need to pay for a separate MCU. This worked for a lot of customers, and the economies of scale took care of the rest.

How is progress toward a useable open source alternative?

Virtually non-existent? There aren't that many people doing open RF hardware, and all of the ones I'm familiar with are working with SDR because the costs go up massively once you go to tapeout.

I am not sure if you can still get the chips, but these are fully OSS:

https://github.com/qca/open-ath9k-htc-firmware

Why doesnt Apple use ESP32

While they’re only now coming out with even a 5GHz model there isn’t really much in Apple’s product line that needs a lowend primarily “IoT” WiFi. Maybe the HomePod, but they already have better chipsets for their flagship devices.

Because the ESP can only barely do WiFi. You can get a couple of Mbps under ideal conditions. It is not a general purpose WiFi adapter, it's a low power IoT chip.

A general purpose WiFi adapter can do gigabit sustained connections over PCI or some other high speed interface. Entirely different class of chip.

A couple?

It easily goes to tens of Mb/s.

Which is still abysmal compared to what a modern Wi-Fi chipset can push, even in the real world. Even an old home-grade Wi-Fi 5 AP can push >400Mbps over the air in real-world conditions. And the Wi-Fi 6/6e/7 devices can go well above that.

Anecdote only: I've never consistently managed 10mb/s without integrating some sort of cooling system. Not without frying the chip.

Citation needed.

To what end?

I can't think of an Apple product that needs low power Wifi and/or Bluetooth, and also operates at such a low price-point that there's not budget to put something bigger on the BoM.

* Too slow * Uses too much power

Apple products would absolutely suck if they used ESP32 for their wifi and Bluetooth functionality.

To chime in, adding the espressif WiFi libraries to your firmware adds 500-600KB of code. In the trivial IoT widget I just made, the firmware is >90% espressif code by weight.

The RAM use is also... noticeable. It takes quite a lot for this chip do WiFi.

It is similar for BLE. I recently wrote firmware for nrf52 device. Proprietary blob was 100 KB. My code was 60 KB and actually like 40-50 KB was caused by crypto library which is basically required part of BLE stack as well, just distributed with code and not in the blob.

ESP32 has 18 ADC input channels. But if you are using Wifi, you can only use 8 of the 18 for ADC conversion: GPIO pins 32-39.

Other 10 pins, on which ADC2 channels are possible, can only accept pulse data if you are using Wifi.

This is probably due to firmware limitations.

Espressif implies that the WiFi hardware uses ADC2 for something. It sounds like a hardware limitation, a firmware issue would have been patched a long time ago.

It sounds like Qualcomm missed an opportunity here:

https://github.com/qca/open-ath9k-htc-firmware

Wi-Fi chips always had "user" program area, in theory anyone could call any of chip vendor, and with NDA, $$$ an 5 years of back and forth, could have met the exact same goal as what you can do today with ESP32, even in 2010. I've seen a Twitter ticker display made from a mPCI Wi-Fi card in a maker meeting back then. The guy demoing it was a company engineer with access to internal docs, wasn't giving it to anyone else.

The genius of Espressif was that they didn't issue C&D letters and DMCA takedowns when people started modifying firmware for their product using garden variety GCC without even asking and then ported hobbyist garbage called Arduino Core. They did initially panic a bit, but soon their management realized it's a golden ticket to something, and they bet the whole company on it. And they got the return they deserve.

There aren't a lot of aspects that are technically so advanced about ESP8266/ESP32. It's just the ones made by the hungriest and most aspiring Wi-Fi chip manufacturer.

Is there a write up somewhere talking about the panicking? It might be interesting to read. I am curious how they enabled people to do this without realizing people would do it.

I wasn't in the scene directly but was only watching it from great distance. It was literally a decade ago, too. Maybe someone can ask Espressif for their side of battle story, but I don't have any more to offer, sorry.

The ESP8266 (the predecessor to the ESP32) was initially sold as a wifi IC, using an AT protocol over UART to communicate with the host MCU. Then some people discovered how to use it directly as an MCU, and the documentation and SDK slowly started being made available.

As for why? Regulatory (FCC) compliance is probably a part of it, I think the ealy ESP chips were dubious in this regard. Licensing might be a factor as well (a lot of wifi chips use ARM cores; Espressif doesn't, though not sure how much of a factor this is). Support comes into it too - established wifi vendors provide support and help you with RF designs; Espressif has forums (maybe larger customers get proper support now?)

I also share the opinion of the fellow commentor and blame the price on the fact that RF front-ends require lots of RnD, often require high quality and precision components (outside the IC) AND on top of that there are testing and certification costs. All of this in just the RF front-end, we are not even talking about the implementation of the absurdly bloated wifi standars in software/silicon and testing and certification for them.

The Espressif chips are WiFi ICs. You can buy the bare chips, connect over SDIO, load the hosted firmware, and use them as WiFi radio chips.

For volume production (10K, 100K, or more units) you can get other WiFi ICs that are cheaper than buying an ESP32 module. The difference is that other companies don’t care about engaging the hobby and low volume markets so they don’t put an effort into making them cheap.

If you’re doing one-off builds, you’re at the mercy of whoever decides to make an effort to make things cheap and accessible. Some companies deliberately make their products hard or even impossible to access for hobbyists because it’s not worth it unless you’re the hobbyist market leader (Espressif)

Do you mean this firmware?

https://github.com/espressif/esp-hosted

I assume it uses the blob that is mentioned in the video.

The WiFi (& Bluetooth) IC used in the Pi Pico W retails for ~$2.5, and presumably a bit less in volume (considering the Pico W is only $2 more than the base Pi Pico.

Where can you find it for $2.5? The last I looked, it was around $6.

They are talking about the radio chip that's on the Pico W. not the whole pico w.

I am asking about the radio chip. The last I checked, buying one from a distributor costs around $6. You would need to do a huge order to get the price down to $2.5 per chip. The required order quantity is so huge that distributors do not list it.

From https://octopart.com/search?q=CYW43439&currency=USD&specs=0.

Indeed the lowest price $2.551 from Arrow has a MOQ of 5000 but Newark does have it for a promotional price of $2.73 for quantities as low as 1.

It’s not $2.5 but that’s why it was quoted as ~$2.5 in my reply, since it’s in the ballpark.

Thanks. I had not known about octopart.

you can get certain variants of the esp32 at around 2USD. that gets you a whole board with USB-c.

Esp32-c3 super mini is less than $2 with free shipping from AliExpress. The usb-c cable I use to power it is more expensive. I get a serious cognitive dissonance when I think about it too much.

Only the ones which have a presence outside of China are expensive.

Why is that? Cost of labor? Looser regulatory requirements?

He’s telling you that they violate IP law extensively in products that don’t leave the country. It’s a lot cheaper to mass produce cheap WiFi chips when you can do it with stolen IP.

They have a very different view of IP than the west. Sharing is the norm.

Does that work for other things? Can I just say “I had a different view of that” and get away with whatever it was?

For many people, information and physical items are completely different entities. When you steal bottle of milk, the original owner loses access to it. When you copy information without permission, the original owner keeps the access to it. So they have completely different attitude to those two behaviours.

> For many people, information and physical items are completely different entities. When you steal bottle of milk, the original owner loses access to it. When you copy information without permission, the original owner keeps the access to it.

Relevant:

Copying Is Not Theft

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4

  Copying is not theft.
  Stealing a thing leaves one less left
  Copying it makes one thing more;
  that’s what copying’s for.
  
  Copying is not theft.
  If I copy yours you have it too
  One for me and one for you
  That’s what copies can do
  
  If I steal your bicycle
  you have to take the bus,
  but if I just copy it
  there’s one for each of us!
  
  Making more of a thing,
  that is what we call “copying”
  Sharing ideas with everyone
  That’s why copying
  is
  FUN!

So what I can walk into any store and walk out with a cart full and not pay and it's all good, sharing is the norm? I can just walk into any apartment complex and move into any unit without pay since sharing is the norm?

No, that's not what anyone said. The conversation is about copyright...

So it's not that "sharing is the norm" it's a difference in the understanding of ownership and property rights. Otherwise why not share the food and share the housing, since sharing is the norm and not the exception when it comes to property rights?

Otherwise why is sharing the norm in one small specific instance and not the rest?

The original statement was in the context of IP. In this case, no one has anything taken away when it is shared. Sharing physical goods requires them to be taken from somewhere/someone... not so much for digital information, which can be duplicated infinitely.

This is a funny comment in the context of a discussion about a (nominally) communist country.

Well, those things aren't IP. Maybe you could take pictures of all the pages in a book in a bookstore?

So only intellectual property is shared? Doesn't sound to me like sharing is the norm when it only applies to one category of goods.

Try reading my comment fully again? I was talking about IP.

Read this if you don't believe me: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/2014/from-gongkai-to-open...

"sharing is the norm" means publishing.

Taking is the norm.

Which is super weird, because Xioami isn’t “sharing” their proprietary OS with any other phone manufacturers.

CATL isn’t “sharing” any of their battery IP with competitors. They consider it trade secret and will actively pursue recourse inside or out of China.

What is apparent is they use cultural misunderstanding to justify stealing IP, even though they actively try to protect their own inside and outside of the country.

https://www.ess-news.com/2024/10/28/calb-sues-catl-over-pate...

It's normal. IIRC Early America didn't have Copyright or other protections, they were added later once it was making its own works and had skin in the game.

So now that China has skin in the game, will they very soon stop stealing IP by your logic?

Copyright and patents have been a part of the US since before day one. It's in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution and was even part of the Articles of Confederation.

Patents were established even before Columbus.

What about it is normal? "Early America" allowed copyright infringement on American soil as long as the IP was stolen from foreign nations, but simultaneously enforced IP nationally and internationally on any claims made by a US company?

Do you have some examples of this? Because I hear it parroted a lot and yet the only thing people can point to is "but the US stole some designs from Brittain on some early machines" - which is not at all what we're talking about here, and was at nowhere near the scale of China's theft.

You probably heard references to Samuel Slater. He memorized the plans for British textile equipment and brought them to the US. He violated British law, but US law did not mind.

Then there is Eli Whitney, to give an example of an American who enjoyed US patent protection. He patented his cotton gin.

You would want to ask a historian for other examples.

I don't think they actually do. They're not dumb or crazy. What I think sets Chinese companies apart from Western counterparts is their aptitude for making money through selling physical things. Everyone else drove off to casinos and they're the last ones in the factory dirtying hands.

As someone growing up in Soviet Union, sharing was the norm for us as well until we were in this s**t together and nobody had any chance to earn much from it anyway. This changed quite fast in nineties though.

IP is defined by RFCs, not law.

(damn, the imaginary property maximalists really came out of the woodwork on this thread)

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