[Coco] CoCo4! 50% done!

[john dumas]

On 2/5/2014 4:19 PM, Aaron Wolfe wrote:
> On Feb 5, 2014 5:04 PM, "Mark Marlette" <mmarlette at frontiernet.net>
>
>> Lets keep it simple....Little to no profit margin, 100 board run, $200
> target price which IMHO, is a GREAT deal. I personally do not think that
> price is obtainable. The reason I say that is because basically you are
> making a custom DE-1, some removes, some add ons. Just call it
> equal....That is what Terasic is selling their device for and they are in
> the market, with contacts and volume. Look at at least twice that for a
> good not going broke starting point.
> Not to mention the dev boards like the DE1 are not a profit oriented
> product for Terasic.  They only make them as a way to build interest in
> their "real" products (the FPGAs themselves), that's why there is a massive
> educational discount.  They quite likely take a loss on the boards.
Don't know about Terasic, but having spend some time in the MOT
group that made the EVM/EVB development boards, I can say that
we were very clearly a LOSS center, not a profit center. The profit
on the silicon paid for the production and our salaries. The boards
were sold for bare minimum price and the simple ones like the HC11EVBs
were GIVEN away to schools, gratis.
At the time, it was my understanding that this was true for most, if
not all, semi manufacturers. "Lock 'em in with your cheap development
boards and sell 'em a whale of a lot of chips!"

Today the economics might be different.....but I doubt it. My FPGA
development board was a great deal.............

cheers,
johnd