BCM2708 availability and price?

$35 a piece. And it comes with a free Raspberry-pi.

More seriously, from several posts in the rasp' website the answer is no. Avaliable only to big customers like Roku, and now the Raspberry-pi.

But I would rather not have to reball it. I guess it's better to look for some other ARM processor/microcontroller which is available in small quantities.

How did the Raspberry Pi foundation convince Broadcom that they would be a big customer in the first place?

//Petter

Major people in the Raspberry Pi foundation (Eben Upton, IIRC, from a talk he gave at a conference) do work for Broadcom.

Mel.

I also think that their conservative plans were for another units that they could talk to Broadcom - they weren't talking a couple of dozen Raspberry Pi, but tens of thousands (and hoping for lots more).

So it all helped - inside contacts, high-profile charity project, and reasonable quantities for the initial order.

Friends in the electronics business tell me that to Broadcom, "lower quantities" means a hundred thousand. Broadcom are a bit fierce with their NDAs as well, so unless you are an official customer you're unlikely to find out how to programme their stuff.

Ian

I didn't expect to be buy from Broadcom directly, but from a distributor. But if they only sell directly to large customers then I'll look for similar devices from Freescale, TI, NXP, etc.

//Petter

Check out the processors they use on the Beagle Boards. TI parts can be bought onesey twosey from Digikey and Mouser.

I think the Beagle line is coming out with a new board in response to the rPi. I hear it is a BeagleBone with video, but haven't looked at the info just yet.

One nice thing about the pi is the bazillions of people using it. The Beagles are not exactly orphans, but there are so many orders of magnitude difference. Such a shame that the rPi folks picked a chip from a company that is so unsupportive of a grassroots community.

BeagleBone Black.

Thanks. That's a good alternative. There's also the Wandboard

//Petter