Actually, that frightens me. I know of another powerful, tested, and DIY friendly compact computer: the Raspberry Pi. The Pi got integrated into so many full fledged commercial products that it's lost its availability for hackers.
If the Framework mainboard becomes a Super-Pi, will Framework owners be able to get the spare parts that they were counting on?
We don’t foresee any issues continuing to make parts and modules available, even with increased demand from module re-use projects and products.
In fact, we explicitly encourage this kind of re-use, because it benefits everyone. It’s a great way to absorb a Mainboard that is being upgraded out of a Framework Laptop for example, increasing its value for re-sale and avoiding it turning into e-waste.
The rumor is that the pi is having issues because Broadcom (who actually owns the IP in their chips) is pissed that they built a for profit company on top of IP Broadcom donated intending to be going to a nonprofit. Rumor is that's also why there's no progress on an RPi5, as that would require coordination with Broadcom. That would also explain why the Pico had no problems being stocked, as it contains no Broadcom IP blocks.
I think Framework is probably fine for the foreseeable future.
As a "community" member I have to say it was annoying when they started prioritizing the integrators during the parts shortage. It feels more like a generic dev board supplier now than an educational / maker focused product.
The compute model in particular was a mistake IMO. I'm sure they do great business but their original focus is lost.
My hope is that eventually will get a Raspberry PI (or something similarly well supported at a software level) based on a RISC V processor that doesn't have these IP issues. I guess it might be difficult to do that for things like WiFi though.
If RPi5 has challenges with Broadcom IP licensing, isn't that an opportunity to create a new SBC product line without Broadcom IP, as many FooPi clones have done?
So much about the full RPi is the Broadcom hardware blocks though. If software didn't really care about those, the FooPi clones would have taken off. Turns out a lot of software targeting RPi actually twiddles those hardware blocks directly.
In that case, Broadcom should be happy that their loss-leading IP has created a gigantic market with unfulfilled demand. They can negotiate a volume agreement with two tiers of product: one for hobbyists, one for commercial integrators.
Review existing RPi commercial use cases to identify features for product segmentation enhancement. Price RPi commercial IP the same as other commercial users of Broadcom IP.
It's not Broadcom IP, all the Pi apart Pico are based on Broadcom chips, which indeed may explain why Pico does not seem to be impacted by supply issues, as you point out.
The likelihood is therefore that supply issues are because of Broadcom...
The chips past the BCM2835 have been a collaboration between Broadcom and the Raspberry Pi Foundation, with rpi taking on a larger share of the work as time goes on.
If it helps to validate the system, then it can only make the company and Framework ecosystem stronger. Supply chain issues are they types of problems that Framework would love to have. You can solve those... lack of demand is another issue entirely.
> Although we are sitting on substantial order backlogs from commercial customers, we expect to gradually increase the fraction of our output which we dedicate to single-unit sales next year until we’re back in our pre-pandemic situation. The chip allocations we’ve received for next year mean that by the end of the third quarter, the channel will have recovered to its equilibrium stocking level, with hundreds of thousands of units available at any given time. At that point, we will have spent a little over two years in a low-stock position: a measure of the severity and persistence of the shortages.
They've not been too truthful with the community over their supply chain issues. At the peak they were still making north of 100k units a month. It's just that over 95% of those were being sold in bulk to direct B2B customers whilst they made record profits.
It's been a rough few months to be a pi community member. The 'its totally a supply problem, out of our control' attitude of the company, and then the uncivil outburst of the co-founders wife on the official Pi social accounts didn't do them any favours. That one was made worse by well known and respected former employees chiming in and mentioning that it was how the company was internally probably didn't help.
Yeah they've burned up a lot of goodwill by prioritizing integrators so heavily. Not just work there community but in Broadcom apparently, according to other comments.
On the other hand expressif is eating their low end, the pico was too expensive too late. Perhaps they will make a bigger board too. They're much better at integrating with the community than Broadcom, they hired community members like sprite_tm.
Was the uncivil outburst in question the attacks on people concerned about them hiring a surveillance cop as their "maker in residence", or was there another uncivil outburst I should know about?
This has basically refueled my idea of making a modern version of the IBM PS/2 Model P70. Instead of desktop components I can use parts of a framework pc to skip out on a lot of the horrors of planning custom builds like this.
