[Oberon] Inexpensive Hardware: Cost vs Objectives

[skulski at pas.rochester.edu]

All;

Let me chime in from the perspective of a product developer. Yes, we
develop products that we hope to sell (see www.FemtoDAQ.com). It so
happens that our product is built around BeagleBone Black (BBB). BBB is
both an inexpensive component (though it costs more than $5) and it is
also a very capable development system. BBB is two things in one, which is
a bit of a miracle. It is a new situation, which was started by the RPi I
think. Before RPi the development system was usually different from the
final product. The development system would be either an emulator, or a
cross compiler, or perhaps a board with extra features that the final
product would not need (such as a JTAG connector). The development system
would cost more, it would be physically larger, or it would run on a
workstation if it was a cross compiler.

The final product could cost a few dollars, while the development system
would cost thousands. A case in point is the Xilinx ISE or Vivado, whose
full license costs a few thousand $$. And we are not surprised that it
does, even though it consists entirely of software.

So why do we expect that a $5 machine will serve both roles? Why are we
unhappy that the Oberon Station, which is clearly a development system, is
not as cheap as the final product would have been? (Notwithstanding the
fact that I am barely aware of any final products built with Oberon.) Low
cost is *not* the usual requirement for a development system. We should
not blame its creator(s) that they added a few extras which cost a little
bit. I would say that ~$100 for a fairly capable development system is a
very good deal.

Concerning those very low cost machines, they are: (a) Quite recent. I am
not sure how well they can be used for development. Maybe they can. But I
would expect inconveniences because I am not sure if useful diagnostics
were included at this price. (b) They are made in tens of thousands or
more items. There is an economy of scale. (c) There is clearly a price war
going on among major manufacturers. The RPi Foundations is trying to keep
its dominant market share, which others are attacking. I would not judge
this situation based entirely on technical merits. The guys are trying to
win over the competition. The most important metrics seems to be the
number of $$. I suspect it is an exceptional situation which will go back
to normal once the market settles.

I would not put lots of effort into any cheap board, because IMHO they
will be soon replaced with even cheaper but different ones. The particular
"pi" will go away before we even learn what was inside. In this situation
one should rather stay on top of an operating system such as Linux, while
avoiding reliance on a particular "pi" feature. These will be soon gone.

Finally, it is a bit unfair to discount a magnificent effort by a very
small team (Paul, NW, Magnus, Chris...) who are not motivated by money.
The Oberon boards were meant to be development systems. They are great and
they are very cheap in their category. What is missing IMHO is a more
clear vision of "what can be developed with those development systems".
Here I can say that the said team is composed of professional developers
of development tools (languages, compilers, etc). So they developed what
they know: the development tools. The *product developers* are missing in
this community. As a consequence, there are no products.

To put it succinctly: the Oberon saw is very sharp thanks to the above
team. But where is the wood which this saw could possibly cut? Well, there
is not much of it because the core team is mostly interested in sharpening
the saw. Nothing wrong with this, but we should be aware of the situation.

OK, I wrote another very long post. I hope it made some sense.

W.