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

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.

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

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

> 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.

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.

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/

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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%...

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.

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.

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.

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.

I think composite video is built into the chip.