ACube and A-EON announce One Vision on future Amiga co-operation

[amigakit]

producing low end PPC mobos in china would cost about 30€ per mobo

Not in my experience.  Only if you produce 100,000s of units.

[utri007]

I belive 10k would be enough.

But to to even consider that it would require OS to be mature enough ie. OS4.2

[amigakit]

I belive 10k would be enough.

But to to even consider that it would require OS to be mature enough ie. OS4.2

Please give me the manufacturer details and I will get on with the job!

[utri007]

Because of my work, I know some, but price depends a shematics and parts.

About a year ago we calculated theoretical price to Sam 440ep flex type board, without extra parts and connectors. But surely you know that this is not a problem, even 10 000 can be  too much. Maybe today it could be 460 type board?

[spirantho]

Price is matter of quantities. Hope with aeon support could help with that, producing low end PPC mobos in china would cost about 30€ per mobo.

They'd be very poor quality, though, at that price, and they'd need to be in massive quantities. Also the PPC used would have to be very low end as the SOC PPCs are quite unusual (embedded PPCs aren't, but ones with all the buses that we need are).
And that's even before you think about design costs.

30 Euros per mobo I'm afraid is way below the costs of anything usable.... otherwise Acube or somebody would have done that already.

[Rob]

Price is matter of quantities. Hope with aeon support could help with that, producing low end PPC mobos in china would cost about 30€ per mobo.

But would 10 000 OS4 capable mobos sell?

I would like to see threads like this without x86 fantasies and whining

If you have something produced in large quantities you don't have to go to China for low prices.  Raspberrry Pi production took place about 15 miles away from AmigaKit.

[Iggy]

Price is matter of quantities. Hope with aeon support could help with that, producing low end PPC mobos in china would cost about 30€ per mobo.

But would 10 000 OS4 capable mobos sell?

I would like to see threads like this without x86 fantasies and whining

YES! Damn another fellow spirit that is tired of hearing calls for what would be a massive re-write of two operating systems.

Now, as to pricing, A-eon isn't interested in lower end models.
I've exchanged messages with Trevor on this.

Now, while we don't have volume, there are two PPC processors that can be had at about a third of the one Trevor is using.
They use the same core as well.
The down side to this is that their max operating speed is only 1.4 GHz (not the 2.2 GHz of the units Trevor is using).

This would make them quite a bit better than Acube's Applied Micro based boards, but not as good as A-eon's boards.

And while MorphOS ports just require funding, there is no guarantee that Hyperion would consider supporting such a board.


Final note - Yes Chinese production is cheap.
I have some contacts there.
But these boards would require several layers and very fine traces, so the costs go up.

Still, a board should be producible in 50 lot quantities for around $500 (maybe slightly more) cost.

That is certainly an improvement on the over $2500 a Nemo motherboard costs.

Again, we are not really making a fair comparison since these would be better compared to a Sam460.
And at retail, would likely have to be sold at SAM460 prices (unless someone producing them was doing so with a zero profit orientation).

[Iggy]

If you have something produced in large quantities you don't have to go to China for low prices.  Raspberrry Pi production took place about 15 miles away from AmigaKit.

Which Raspberry Pi?
I know of several Chinese versions.

[Rob]

Which Raspberry Pi?
I know of several Chinese versions.

The ones manufactured by Sony UK in Pencoed.

[utri007]

They'd be very poor quality, though, at that price, and they'd need to be in massive quantities. Also the PPC used would have to be very low end as the SOC PPCs are quite unusual (embedded PPCs aren't, but ones with all the buses that we need are).
And that's even before you think about design costs.

30 Euros per mobo I'm afraid is way below the costs of anything usable.... otherwise Acube or somebody would have done that already.

Pretty much every electronical vehicle you use, is made in china. Almost every x86 mobo you can found is made in china. Talking about quality is relative.

ACube already did this, but they manufactured mobos in Italy and ordered very low quantities with quite lot extra features, wich are not useable with us. I must admit that quality is super good.

What I think, is that when OS4.2 comes out there is a good change to get new users wich OS4 needs, so getting some low cost mobos would be important. Could be good idee to sell mobos for very low profit, just to make future more brightening. Maximize volume etc.

[Iggy]

@utri007

I tend to agree with you, there is no inherent advantage to making a board in Italy versus making one in China.
Increasingly, I find myself relying on Chinese vendors.

[Iggy]

The ones manufactured by Sony UK in Pencoed.

So while they are the one that signed the agreement with the MCU vendor, you're dismissing all the knock offs?

[utri007]

@utri007

I tend to agree with you, there is no inherent advantage to making a board in Italy versus making one in China.
Increasingly, I find myself relying on Chinese vendors.

Most likely factory in Italy is able to produce small numbers of mobos, when chinesse factories requires bigger orders. Minium is about 10 000

Nobody hasn't wanted to pay for 10 000 mobos, for several reasons. Hardware must be ready, it is a different thing to order 50 mobos and if there is a problem fix it to next order, than order 10 000 mobos and found a problem.

Best solutin would be produce 50 mobos in Italy, test them with users and then order rest of them from china.

Ofcourse this would cost more than 30€ per mobo, but calculation costs is sometimes relative to marketing strategy.

Another problem is that OS4 is not mature enough, there is no sense to produce 10 000 mobos without Radeon HD drivers, Office suite, etc. Five years ago it would have more sense, Sam 440ep Flex level mobo WITHOUT fpga, extra connectors, second land, it would had been cost that 30€ per mobo. In that time there was a Radeon 9250 drivers wich was OK

[takemehomegrandma]

When the Pegasos 2 G4 was introduced a decade ago, its introduction price for end-users was €499 EUR (~$680 USD in todays rate) including VAT (was it Luxembourg's 15% rate?). Genesi's price strategy was to set an initial high price and then lower it over time (a "skimming" price strategy). Back then I do recall that I thought it was kind of expensive for a motherboard/CPU combo, especially by the value of the money back then, but it was a small volume product for a narrow market, so high prices are to be expected, right? And when I say "high prices", I mean compared to x86 (not to PPC Mac's). It was neither designed nor manufactured in China, it was all European. After a while the price came down a bit, in *at least* 2 price drops IIRC. And when the Pegasos 2 was finally discontinued, the remaining stock was sold out at $399 USD, brand new.

At one time, some people in the Amiga community begged Genesi/bPlan (who was then completely focused on development based on ARM CPU's) to make another PPC motherboard. They thought this would be a bad idea themselves since they didn't see any business incentives for it (it would be an "impossible" product), but they finally agreed to do it provided that the community would cover the development cost.

The computer would be based on the Freescale 8610, one of the most potent and cost effective e600 CPU's at that time, and it would have the following specs:

• Flex form factor - MPC8610@1Ghz (or faster if it is economically feasable)
• 4x SATA 2 connectors
• 4x USB2 ports
• 2x Gigabit Ethernet ports
• Sound ports (Audio Out, Mic In)
• 1 PCI slot
• 1 PCI-e slot 1x
• 1 PCI-e slot 8x

This would be realized through a six (?) step bounty scheme, that in the end would add up to $60,000 (IIRC, or was it EUR, can't remember, doesn't really matter anyway). The total cost would have been about 20 A1 X1000 systems, give or take some. And since it would have been a community founded project, the entire HW would be completely open source and free for grab for anyone who wanted to make a production run, like A-cube did with the Mini Mig.

Just wanted to put things into perspective.

[Andre.Siegel]

When the Pegasos 2 G4 was introduced a decade ago, its introduction price for end-users was €499 EUR (~$680 USD in todays rate) including VAT (was it Luxembourg's 15% rate?). Genesi's price strategy was to set an initial high price and then lower it over time (a "skimming" price strategy).

Considering the cost of development and production, the pricing of the Pegasos mainboards was very aggressive and chosen to help grow the market more quickly. If the product had been positioned as a niche product with small growth potential instead, the price would have had to be considerably higher than it was.

Back then I do recall that I thought it was kind of expensive for a motherboard/CPU combo, especially by the value of the money back then, but it was a small volume product for a narrow market, so high prices are to be expected, right? And when I say "high prices", I mean compared to x86 (not to PPC Mac's).

Everything is relative. If you compare the cost of a passively cooled Pegasos mainboard / processor combination to a passively cooled x86 solution from back then, it was not expensive at all. Even today, "silent computing" afficionados are willing to pay quite a premium.

It was neither designed nor manufactured in China, it was all European. After a while the price came down a bit, in *at least* 2 price drops IIRC. And when the Pegasos 2 was finally discontinued, the remaining stock was sold out at $399 USD, brand new.

This was via direct sales to consumers á la DELL, however. There were retailers that were not too happy about the price drops because their profit margins were rather slim to begin with and some of them still had mainboards in stock that they had bought at prices that did not allow them to match Genesi's lower pricing.

As happens often with startup companies, the distribution strategy for the Pegasos changed frequently from a traditional retail-focused approach, to an elaborate affiliate program, and direct sales.

At one time, some people in the Amiga community begged Genesi/bPlan (who was then completely focused on development based on ARM CPU's) to make another PPC motherboard. They thought this would be a bad idea themselves since they didn't see any business incentives for it (it would be an "impossible" product), but they finally agreed to do it provided that the community would cover the development cost.

A former Genesi contractor had an idea for a new PowerPC mainboard and asked bplan for a price quote. After a careful review and discussions on websites such as MorphZone, he concluded that it was too risky to proceed. This was the starting point for the bounty project.

This would be realized through a six (?) step bounty scheme, that in the end would add up to $60,000 (IIRC, or was it EUR, can't remember, doesn't really matter anyway).

The cost would have been about 100.000 US dollars.

[takemehomegrandma]

@Andre.Siegel

Well, I still have a hard time believing that you would have to manufacture the motherboards in China in volumes of tens of thousands per batch in order to build a PPC motherboard that *doesn't* cost €1,950 EUR (incl the UK VAT) in a Christmas Sale special price, especially so if you're only looking to break even (as has been said about Trevor's ambitions about the X1000). The new motherboard has been said to be a bit cheaper, but not a lot. I don't buy it (in double meaning). I think something is terribly wrong with this picture. Either design decisions, management, or the fees of Varisys for doing the work.

"Trevor said that it cost over US$400,000 to develop the X1000."

"A-EON Technology & Ultra Varisys sign $1.2M agreement for new PowerPC hardware."

This can only lead to the price tags we have seen from them, especially if only a few hundreds of OS4 users are supposed to pay the bill. Maybe Trevor should have asked around some more before settling with Varisys, asked for quotations from more than one design company? That's a management thing. And maybe the design should have been a bit simpler? Did anyone even ask for a "Xorro"/"Xena" in the first place? And after having done the $3,000 X1000 systems with this crazy design from Varisys, why do it all over again for a new computer?

I mean, *this* is totally crazy:

http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/mac-pro

It's a whopping $2,999!!!

But that's a completely unique custom design with...

3.7GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5 processor
12GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC memory
Dual AMD FirePro D300 with 2GB GDDR5 VRAM each
256GB PCIe-based flash storage

...and it *includes* the Apple brand tax!

Again, something is severely wrong with the "AmigaOne" picture...