$9 CHIP Computer

[ORAC]

This $9 computer could change the economics of building hardware (http://www.capx.co/external/the-age-of-9-computers/)

Today in a garage in Oakland, California, a company that could pave the way for a new generation of hardware startups is being built. Much like William Hewlett and David Packard started Hewlett-Packard out of their garage in Palo Alto, a building that would become the nexus of Silicon Valley, a group of entrepreneurs in that Oakland garage have built a $9 computer called Chip (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598272670/chip-the-worlds-first-9-computer) that could end up reducing the cost of building smart devices to less than $100 per gadget.

Dave Rauchwerk, CEO of Next Thing Co. which is the company behind Chip, says the idea of building Chip came to the company after it built a hackable camera that was designed to take GIFs—the looping images that litter the web. The camera cost about $250, and was built using a Raspberry Pi—an open-source Linux computer that cost about $35. But the $250 camera price tag was too expensive for something designed to be a fun toy for most.

To bring the price of the camera down Rauchwerk knew he had to get the cost of computing down, so he decided to work on that problem. With the help of Chinese chip company Allwinner Technology and the accelerator program Hax.co (formerly known as HAXLR8R) he built the Chip board, a 1 gigahertz processor using an ARM core that contains 512 megabytes of RAM and 4 Gigabytes of storage. For those whose eyes just glazed over, this is equivalent to the computing power of a low-end smart phone. It’s plenty to run low-end games or a smart hub or connected device. The chip can connect to a monitor and also comes with both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity included on the board.

And that’s what makes this chip so impressive. At $9 someone can buy this computer and build a credible connected product on top of it, and then sell the end device for about $100 or so at retail. When someone builds a product on top of a Raspberry Pi for example, they are stuck building on top of something relatively expensive, which means the end product is going to cost about $200 or more at retail. And as Rauchwerk explains, “That puts it out of the range of an impulse buy.”

So far the Chip is a Kickstarter effort, with Allwinner and Next Thing Co. producing it in batches of 5,000 computers. Allwinner is a credible manufacturers of silicon, producing the chips for many of the Android tablets of the last few years. Rauchwerk says that right now, the focus is on getting developers interested in using the board, not in selling massive quantities of the chip, but he’s confident that Allwinner can handle the demand. The Kickstarter, which is only a few days old, has already hit $701,873 surpassing its $50,000 goal with almost 14,000 backers.

The computer runs an open source software package consisting of LibreOffice and the Chromium browser, but developers can port other open source software platforms to Chip if they want. Chip will ship its first batch in September of this year and its second in May 2016. If it’s a hit, expect to see a lot of really cheap connected devices flood the market about a year later.

[darkroomsource]

I don't get it.
If you build a product using a $35 computer it has to retail for $250, but if you build it using a $9 computer it can retail for $100.
Um, I see $26 difference in cost, so where's the other $150 coming from?

[mixture]

Next Thing Co. , Allwinner Technology, accelerator program Hax.co

Who, who and who ?

R&D for semiconductors is an expensive business....a $701,873 kickstarter project is a mere tip on the iceberg.

Personally I don't think much will come of it. It reads as someone who's trying to compete with the likes of Raspberry Pi but fluffing up the story a different way.

[G0ULI]

darkroomsource

Basic business economics, the retail selling price of product needs to equal ten times the cost of the parts used to manufacture it. That covers labour, packaging costs, transport costs, and the factory and retailers mark up.

Basic cost of getting a product out of a factory is generally three times the cost of the parts plus three times any labour costs.

Any business operating below these margins will eventually fail due to lack of funds for future product development and poor investment returns for any financial backers.

[ExXB]

Somehow 'in a garage' and 'with the help of a Chinese Chip company' doesnt equate.

Advertorial to sucker in a few punters perhaps?

Caveat Emptor

[darkroomsource]

Basic business economics, the retail selling price of product needs to equal ten times the cost of the parts used to manufacture it. That covers labour, packaging costs, transport costs, and the factory and retailers mark up.

Basic cost of getting a product out of a factory is generally three times the cost of the parts plus three times any labour costs.

Any business operating below these margins will eventually fail due to lack of funds for future product development and poor investment returns for any financial backers.

Basically, my point, but I wasn't as clear.

We have a product X, that costs $250
We are going to reduce the cost of one of the components from $35 to $9
So "we should be able to reduce the total cost to $100"

That does not compute.

They aren't talking about reducing the number of "other" components, or the labour involved, or the marketing, or anything else, just the cost of one component.

[Booglebox]

I think this project is dead in the water, now that Samsung are going to sell 3 different models of mobile phone chips to end users.

[henry_crun]

Using the Allwinner A13 is a really good way to go - an existing SoC with a good track record and, most importantly, frugal energy consumption suitable for use on battery power.

Their nice vid is here:

The World's First $9 Computer: Meet Chip by Next Thing Co. (http://makezine.com/2015/05/07/next-thing-co-releases-worlds-first-9-computer/)

Click "PLAY" on the banana.

By comparison Raspberry Pi is very much a high-consumption bodge-up, it sucks so much power that a single usb will not support it, and to use it on portable power you would need to tow a car battery on a trolley.

[henry_crun]

...and this is a battery powered oscilloscope kit for unbelievably fifteen quid.

DIY Digital Oscilloscope Kit Electronic Learning Kit Sale-Banggood.com (http://www.banggood.com/DIY-Digital-Oscilloscope-Kit-Electronic-Learning-Kit-p-969762.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Celc-ad-simi2-Oscilloscope&utm_content=hazel&utm_design=27&gclid=CPC5jOOI08UCFQH3wgodpw0AVg)

...based on ARM Cortex chip.

[G0ULI]

The £15 oscilloscope kit is stunning value for money provided you don't want to measure anything higher than audio frequency waveforms. This kit is great as an educational tool and would be suitable for troubleshooting audio equipment. I suspect anyone with the tools and skills to build it will already have access to far more sophisticated gear.

Worth it though, just for the parts.

[EEngr]

We have a product X, that costs $250
We are going to reduce the cost of one of the components from $35 to $9
So "we should be able to reduce the total cost to $100"

That does not compute.I'm just guessing here. But at this end of the market, most of the costs involve packaging and peripherals. So by using a 'single chip' computer, they are eliminating the need to stuff a Raspberry Pi into the case along with the interconnections to the camera h/w. Smaller package and a single board that can be machine stuffed as opposed to manual assembly steps.:8

[darkroomsource]

EEngr,
I agree with you completely, but that's not what the article(s) say about this chip.
It's just a $9 replacement for a Raspberry Pi.
It's smaller, based on pictures, but looks to have the same connections etc.

Why am I going on about this?
Because I can already get Raspberry Pi and Arduino boards for $9 to $30, and use them in projects, and wonder how this $9 chip is going to make any difference in the market.
I would like to see a chip that does what you say, and puts some of the common devices on the main board, but then it's not a computer chip, but rather a special application chip.