Actually I was thinking 'unsustainable' rather than revolutionary.
Having lived in/through/with the birth/blossoming/commercialization of both the microcomputer and the non-factory robotics businesses, I find the breathless ecstasy of 'getting into production' a wonderful thing, but its a lot like falling in love, there are a lot of things that happen next that you're going to have to live through.
Given that they are taking nearly zero margin on these devices (at least according to this post), they have many pot holes to look out for:
1) Their Chinese factory turns out to be some guy's brother-in-law who got them a cheap price because he's using counterfeit parts. Or worse the guy that bid for the job expects to build the factory to build them with the money your going to pay him up front.
2) Their board vendor tech sneezed and accidentally added a direct short to the films they are using to make the boards.
3) The part they ordered for the USB connector is discontinued by the vendor who gave them a price of $0.25 and its now only available from some other vendor for $2.25 each.
4) The pick and place robot put a set of boards on 90 degrees out of kilter, so the entire batch has all the parts soldered into the wrong places.
5) The customs guys open them up, and not seeing the requisite safety symbol/OfCom/FCC/ISO/CET whatever certificate denies them entry into the country
The list goes on and on. One of the challenges of manufacturing is knowing not only what the parts cost but what costs the system is going to impose on you. You need to build in a margin that covers both otherwise you'll underestimate what it will cost you to build a product.
So new manufacturing experience aside (and its going to be a great learning experience if they can keep reminding themselves that it is a learning experience), it sounds like they have a really great way of bringing home to the politicians how their policies affect jobs locally. It almost seems like a reasonably responsive government should sponsor some group to manufacture a new product domestically and then carefully track the barriers to doing so and eliminate those that are amenable to a political fix. Tariffs on imported semi-conductors (protecting the local fabs?) and electronic components when such components cannot be locally sourced seems like a good starting point.
I certainly hope they will be able bring that message clearly to Parliament. It would be refreshing to have really hard to object to facts in the debates going on.
David Braben has been in the computer games field since the 1980s and has made a fair amount of money from it, Eben Upton works for Broadcom (the chip supplier for the Pi), and the rest are all pretty well known in their fields too.
So overall, I think they should by now know what they're doing, and with Braben on board should have some money to make it happen.
Have you guys really been reading about the raspberry pi? The founder is an SoC architect at Broadcom, I'm sure they'll find a reputable and cost effective manufacturing partner with their industry contacts.
Yes, I've been reading their stuff. And I'm hoping they are wildly successful! But I had to chuckle at your comment that their founder is an SoC architect because it reminded me of a really funny moment at this company I helped start back in the mid 90's. We had this new PCI card that we were getting manufactured for our systems and the guy who designed it was complaining about the delays in getting cards to put into test systems. Our director of manufacturing was really pissed off at the emails he was dealing with asking why things weren't ready and his response was along the lines of
"... some architect designs something and thinks that I can just bend over and pull a few thousand out of my ass. Doesn't he get that someone has to build the fucking thing and then somehow we have get them here?"
It was my first exposure to the more sordid details of getting a piece of hardware from prototype into production. For years up to that point I could easily get 10 or 100 of something made, but I hadn't ever tried to get 10,000 made, or had contracts in place to have them made on a regular basis.
Manufacturing acuity is not in the standard make up of senior technical people, its a process puzzle but with people rather than logic, with regulations rather than resource constraints, and with cash rather than electricity. The art of creating streams of parts which arrive at facility to take part in a process of assembly (and perhaps sub assembly) test and delivery, is a very different skill than designing an SoC.
That being said, its an amazing sight to behold when its all working right, sort of an eternal Rube Goldberg machine. And some folks make it look effortless.
Indeed, I think they really did set themselves in by setting a price point. We have seen so many projects, like the OLPC $100, I mean $200 computer, the OpenPandora and a number of others go down this same route and learning the hard way.
Fortunately there's a massive amount of buzz around this project, so even if the initial batches are unreliable and the units get to market at double the initial intended price, people are willing to put up with it. Perhaps the initial buzz is not a bad strategy, since it has a similar effect to Microsoft's strategy in the 90s. Many people hold off on buying other things waiting for this product, and even if it's not delivering as promised they are now psychologically invested in it.
As you say, it's also a good way for many people to learn about the barriers UK manufacturers have to face. I hope this will help bring about some change.
Having lived in/through/with the birth/blossoming/commercialization of both the microcomputer and the non-factory robotics businesses, I find the breathless ecstasy of 'getting into production' a wonderful thing, but its a lot like falling in love, there are a lot of things that happen next that you're going to have to live through.
Given that they are taking nearly zero margin on these devices (at least according to this post), they have many pot holes to look out for:
1) Their Chinese factory turns out to be some guy's brother-in-law who got them a cheap price because he's using counterfeit parts. Or worse the guy that bid for the job expects to build the factory to build them with the money your going to pay him up front.
2) Their board vendor tech sneezed and accidentally added a direct short to the films they are using to make the boards.
3) The part they ordered for the USB connector is discontinued by the vendor who gave them a price of $0.25 and its now only available from some other vendor for $2.25 each.
4) The pick and place robot put a set of boards on 90 degrees out of kilter, so the entire batch has all the parts soldered into the wrong places.
5) The customs guys open them up, and not seeing the requisite safety symbol/OfCom/FCC/ISO/CET whatever certificate denies them entry into the country
The list goes on and on. One of the challenges of manufacturing is knowing not only what the parts cost but what costs the system is going to impose on you. You need to build in a margin that covers both otherwise you'll underestimate what it will cost you to build a product.
So new manufacturing experience aside (and its going to be a great learning experience if they can keep reminding themselves that it is a learning experience), it sounds like they have a really great way of bringing home to the politicians how their policies affect jobs locally. It almost seems like a reasonably responsive government should sponsor some group to manufacture a new product domestically and then carefully track the barriers to doing so and eliminate those that are amenable to a political fix. Tariffs on imported semi-conductors (protecting the local fabs?) and electronic components when such components cannot be locally sourced seems like a good starting point.
I certainly hope they will be able bring that message clearly to Parliament. It would be refreshing to have really hard to object to facts in the debates going on.