Ulf, what of these new AVRs? :)

Apparently he is talking about *development tool* distributors. Why anyone would expect *them* to supply free chips is a mystery to me.

A lot do.

More often than I recall once happening, I'm seeing the IC vendors supplying tools -- some at rather steep pricing. If you look at Analog Devices (for which I have long experience to draw upon), you will see first that they provide the tools to use their ADSP-21xx series for free. It runs in DOS and works extremely well. Any number of seats you want -- they don't care, just buy their chips and they are happy. No problems with the tools. Even their ice board, which is a green circuit board with a push button in the middle, 4 rubber glued-on pads underneath, and easy enough to use, was dirt cheap. Even I bought one for personal use.

Then they shifted to Windows, bought up a developer group or two, and shifted over to a complicated and painful registration process and charged serious money for the tools (several thousand dollars, as I recall.) Now, they charge even more. And the ICE systems aren't cheap, either. Now, you have to pony up some serious cash just to get in the door.

Some manufacturers are definitely making the software a profit center of its own.

Also, I also understand (from a number of conversations over the years and trouble events I've experienced) that when the manufacturers used to depend on outside software developers for their tools, their manufacturing competition would sometimes "buy up" that company and create a sudden trouble for their competition by refusing to continue any relationship with them -- forcing them into disaster mode. So, perhaps some of this is inevitable defensive measures. But in the end, they are also deciding that beyond just being defensive, they are also wanting to profit from the business of developing software and not just the chips they sell.

Jon

My suspicion is that there is more than just the profit behind this. How much will a chip vendors revenue be affected by the sales of development software? Obviously a tiny fraction of 1%... It appears to be about control or something else we just cannot (yet) guess... Let's hope time will show it before it is too late (i.e. before the big ones have killed off all small tech companies)....

Dimiter

------------------------------------------------------ Dimiter Popoff Transgalactic Instruments

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Then again I get the impression that some of them would like to support GNU more than they do, but are afraid of falling out with their "official" tool suppliers.

This would also be an argument for manufacturers to actively support free tools. And I think this is happening. Take your example of Analog Devices. I have no inside knowledge, but it very much looks like they have sponsored the Blackfin port of gcc.

Cirrus Logic told me this once. I wish I could remember the guy's name there, he is the most helpful semi vendor apps support engineer to whom I've ever spoken.

There are some valid points in this thread.

Not in ANY other industry do people expect to buy retail quantities, get wholesale pricing and support and expect to talk to the Manufacturer's design engineers when something goes Fubar...

Quite ridiculous really. There is an established food chain in the electronics industry and while it's natural to want more, you can't snub manufacturers for directing traffic through the correct channels.

I don't enjoy purchasing petrol at retail prices - but do I expect to fill up at the refinery? Noooo...

-Andrew M

In article , Andrew M writes

at

Exactly.

The manufacturers talk to the large buyers The silicon distributors talk to the medium and smaller buyers Often the tools distributors are left to talk to the smaller users as even the people who only want a few will need to develop with tools.

That is how it works. So you either need to be buying a large number or at least the tools for development. This is the general rule but of course everyone will know exceptions.

My point was that if you only want a few parts and you are not now, or have or will in the future buy any tools in whose interest is it to spend time and money supplying you with parts? BTW time also cost money.

With the fuel analogy if you want 100 tankers worth you go to the refinery (and they will probably fill up your car for free when you go to do the deal). If you want 10 tankers worth you go to a distributor (and they may fill up your car at cost when you do the deal).

If you want a car tank full you go to the local garage and if you are lucky they give you vouchers to spend more money with them.

On the other hand if you are an F1 racing team or a vehicle manufacturer who is going to make lots of vehicle that will use the fuel they will supply you with free fuel for design and test. Have a tanker or two....

Nothing is free in this life. That is a fact. It is all paid for somewhere. Either in hard cash or in time which also cost money.

This is why the silicon vendors like the free tools. They can get their chips in on a low risk strategy. They don't have to spend money to try the chips. Accountants like this.

It is a commercial not a technical decision. This is business not religion.

This is why the silicon distributors often let the tools companies have samples to distribute. If an engineer is buying one set of tools the they have made their margin and are happy to supply some samples. It does not waste the time of the silicon disti and the tool vendor does not care if the engineer makes one or 1000 systems.

Not a good analogy -- gasoline is a commodity and it's all the same everywhere. You don't need info from the refinery about the details of its internal workings to be able to use it.

Sorry about late answer but the NEWS provider I use can suddenly enter a mode where it refuses to accept posting.

There has been very limited engineering samples of the new mega128x/256x during 2005 while the parts have been debugged. I think about 80% of the parts I got went to distribution customers. There are still a number of people waiting for samples.

I am holding my thumbs for february when rev E is out. If everything works out OK, there should be plenty of samples by then. ATmega1280/1s should also go into general sampling by then but production is later.

I am not aware of any official policy within Atmel that says that samples should be reserved for large customers. I think that delays or non-deliveries are caused by the sample order system which requires manual intervention.

There are two sample systems, one open to the public (on the Atmel web site) and one for internal use. The web sample order generates an email to a sales engineer which has to enter the sample order into the internal sample system.

I suspect that there is a risk that large or known customers could get more attention, since the system depends on the sales engineer receiving the sample order. We are all overworked and prioritize, right?

If I decided to open up my own shop, I would ask a *distributor* for samples and request to have the sample order number back as a feedback. This is a guarantee that the sample order has been entered. I believe that if this is done this way, the system should ensure that the samples are delivered quickly.

I don't think it was his own motivations operating, Ulf. He was apologetic about having to ask the questions he did. So I'm pretty sure that he was told to ask. The fact that you aren't aware now of such a policy doesn't mean there wasn't one then, or that it couldn't have been a regional management decision and not a global one. I frankly don't know. However, there is one thing I am certain of and that is my experience and my copies of the email exchanges between the parties.

That would probably _not_ explain the FAE's questions or his explanations or his apologies.

This was 2002, keep in mind.

I didn't use that approach. If you read back through google, you will see that I contacted my local distributor, All American, and worked through them. I already had spoken with the Atmel FAE on other occasions about this particular part and some of the technical merits, and also to begin a dialogue with Jaques about the part (which proceeded slowly, since at first the FAE felt he needed to be in the middle of the dialog and the 'around the world' issue added some delays.) I don't think the FAE was taken by surprise by All American's request on my behalf.

It never even crossed my mind to consider using a web page for this, at that time.

Well, sure.

:)

This may be true, for now, Ulf. But believe me, I had confirmation that All American had done their job. The FAE and I began speaking on this subject a few months after the order through All American and when I was starting to wonder. I don't believe there is any reasonable question at all that the sample order had been properly processed into Atmel. He certainly didn't mention any such issue and there was no discussion between me and the Atmel FAE that would suggest anything like that -- quite to the contrary, in fact.

I'm pretty sure that wasn't the problem, not to mention the fact that our discussions were honestly about other reasons why. The FAE was pretty clear.

...

I should add something. If you do a google search using my last name as the author, comp.arch.embedded as the newsgroup, and Atmel and the AT90S2313 as keywords, and sort by date, you will find that my earliest comments fitting that search (in 1999) were very positive. I still feel that way about the technical merits on many of the parts.

I appreciate your attempts to find an explanation for my experiences. But I lived them, Ulf. You didn't. I will always have more information about what happened to me than you will and that puts me at an advantage over someone who is only able to speak generally from quite a distance, literally and metaphorically.

So this isn't really fair to you and you should not have to try and explain what did happen. The most you should consider doing is to simply appreciate it, but not try and change my mind about it. You'll lose that last battle, if that is where you are going, unless you are truly willing to do a thorough investigation on the basis of emails I have here and provide a convincing and detailed explanation of that situation as it played out then. Personally, I'm willing to just leave it in the past and not worry about it. There are many other excellent options and I don't want or need to worry about the past.

Jon

On 20/01/2006 the venerable Ulf Samuelsson etched in runes:

Well I've just put the system to the test and applied online for two samples of ATmega2561. I am developing test code for a C compiler and need to run the code on an STK500/501 for testing.

Let's hope you are the sales enginer who receives my request.

Thanks in advance.

And if it works then you should get it in February since that is when the general sampling begins of that part.

I have also been told to ask, but only for early samples and not for parts in general sampling. Early samples are always a special case and should not be confused with general sampling policy.

...

are

I think that my humble goal is to find out what went wrong to be able to suggest the best approach to solve the problem or find a workaround

In this case, only Atmel can solve the problem, but the workaround is to order through a distributor and get the order number. If the part is in general sampling, (and there is stock) then the parts should arrive soon. If the samples are ordered over the web, then it may or may not appear

I can't say. I ordered them when I read they were ready to be sampled and I can't recall ever hearing the Atmel FAE mention that what I was asking for was special in any way. It probably would have made his job easier with me, had he mentioned that I was asking for special attention. And I certainly didn't go into this expecting any special, advance treatment. It was a simple request for two samples of a part that Atmel had openly advertised as sampling and where that was confirmed by All American through their own conversations with Atmel, relayed back to me. But I cannot say what All American represented to Atmel. That would be outside my view.

Jon

Hello Tsevtan,

Nice. Now I know my newsreader can display cyrillic letters :-)

When I recall some of the speeches by CEOs of the big European ones I am not so sure their semiconductor business is doing that well. I still remember Jan Timmer from Philips (a long time ago) slamming his fist onto the pulpit and that if sales didn't improve there would have to be organizational consequences and all that. I could have told him about some of the things that they did wrong. The mistakes were nearly all in marketing.

Now I am not complaining about stuff you can buy from Digikey, Maplin, Reichelt. Or from Olimex :-)

What I am not tolerating is that when there is no way to get a part anywhere else. Last case was a FET. I called the big company and told them I or my client need x samples and we'd pay for them and the shipping and all. They promised and then didn't come through. What they don't realize is that a small consultant can have a substantial impact on their bottomline when he then decides to design such a part out and use one from ONSemi instead. Those decisions are typically final, for the next ten years of mass production or so. It's big $$.

There is a reason why companies such as TI are more successful than others.

Regards, Joerg

and

When sample are out of stock they are out of stock.

I remember one day, when our largest customer was promised samples 6 weeks after they had everything else and I went to a local catalogue company shop (ELFA) and bought it the same day and sent it to the customer. That customer certainly appreciated that the part were available.

People seems to interpret poor (mismanaged) sample departments as evil intent.

In article , Joerg writes

This is a problem in the UK there are a lot of small companies doing design for large companies who manufacture in the far east.

So often the contractor/consultant* or small design outfit have no idea on the numbers that will be built by the people they are designing for. Or where in the world it will be built.

The UK looks as though it only need 500 parts a week whereas the Far East use 500 a second. So the semiconductor companies put effort in the palaces they see the demand not realising that the need is actually being generated by small companies on the other side of the planet.

This is one of the reason why the semiconductor companies and their distis will work with tool distributors. The tool distributors know who is developing on what parts or at least who is buying the tools.

• A consultant is a contractor who plays golf :-)