| [Rant] Pegasos "too cheap" rumours debunked | ANN.lu |
| Posted on 24-Jul-2004 12:37 GMT by Johan Rönnblom | 68 comments
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For some time now, rumours that the Pegasos is sold at a cheaper price than
production cost have been frequent in some circles. Recently, these claims
were brought out into the open and could quickly be shown to be based upon
incorrect assumptions about the Pegasos hardware.
For some time now, rumours that the Pegasos is sold at a cheaper price than
production cost have been frequent in some circles. In this
thread well known AmigaOS4 contributor Stefan Burström brought the rumour
out into the open claiming: "The USERS of a cheap, subsidised
mainboard are happy because they have cheap hardware. However, they did not
pay the actual cost of the hardware. [...] The Pegasos users may be happy
for a short while the Pegasos is cheap, but the truth is that it doesn't
finance itself."
He later clarified himself to speak only about the Pegasos 1: "Well, I was
refering to Pegasos 1 since that is the only board I have made any homework
on, so don't put any words in my mouth I didn't speak.", "I brought it up
simply because this 'subsidised' discussion has been here before so I
decided to do some homework. On _that_ board. I have no information on the
Pegasos II so I decided not to discus it. Simple eh?" and "I insist on it
because I am not claiming that the Pegasos 2 is
subsidised. Simple eh? This whole subsidised story started with
the Pegasos 1 and back then I supported it and did some homework."
Stefan supported his claims by stating that he had experience in the field:
"Oh, btw, a part of my professional job is to design cost effective
consumer electronics, so I think I have a fair amont of knowledge of the
actual costs associated with PCB manufacturing."
He then claimed that based upon his calculations of the Pegasos mainboard
PCB cost, the machine must be too expensive to make:
"I started out with the PCB to get a starting point of the discussion.
[...] I find it hard to believe that a board like this would have a PCB
with a cost of 1/3th of the total BOM [Bill Of Materials]."
He explained that his guess was based mainly of his estimate of the PCB
cost: "I started building a BOM way back yes. I guess I still have
the draft somewhere on my old A4K. I never got that far as checking prices
for the more advanced chips though." and "But fwiw, I
calculated the PCB cost now just because it was the easiest one to do with
most chance of getting accurate prices even 2 years back. For the NB, SB,
Ethernet Phy, AC97 etc. it would have been much harder to find the accurate
numbers which I started to look up way back."
Stefan's estimate of the mainboard PCB cost: "Right but it is still a ~100
sq inch PCB. 6 or 8 layers I'd guess. Microvias between layer 1-2 and 7-8
to be able to route the BGA's. A small scale production run of such a PCB
easily reaches 100 USD per board. And that is before the startup costs for
the PCB fab is distributed on the boards." and later clarified that "The
expensive part is the micro via layer, not the actual # of the layer it
goes through."
The inclusion of a the cost for a micro via layer did not come from
knowledge about the Pegasos 1 board, however: "I havn't seen anything
but pictures of a Pegasos so I havn't been able to inspect the
boards."
Instead, he motivated it by referring to his stated knowledge about PCB design:
"Nope, since I know that the Artica is a 492 pin BGA with a ballpitch of
around 1.27 mm. Further more, the southbridge is is most likely as similar
package as the VT82C686 (I have the datasheet here) which also has
ballpitch of 1.27mm. Given a track width of 5 mils and clearance of 5 mils
that would make it impossible to route using only through hole vias.
Convinced yet?"
However, the fact is that the Pegasos (1 and 2) boards have six layers,
that the area is 63 square inches rather than 100, and that they do not
have any expensive micro vias.
Thus, it seems that the rumours that the Pegasos 1 (and Pegasos 2, even if
Stefan is not among those making that claim) is based on incorrect
assumptions about the Pegasos hardware.
Finally, I'd like to give Stefan some credit for having the guts to bring
this up in public, rather than keeping it "behind the scenes" where these
claims are seldom questioned and are quickly accepted as facts by many
people.
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List of all comments to this article| Sorted by date, most recent at bottom |
| Comment 1 | Johan Rönnblom | | 24-Jul-2004 10:41 GMT |
| Comment 2 | Sammy Nordström | | 24-Jul-2004 10:50 GMT |
| Comment 3 | Fabio Alemagna | Registered user | 24-Jul-2004 10:56 GMT |
| Comment 4 | anonymous | | 24-Jul-2004 11:00 GMT |
| Comment 5 | Sammy Nordström | | 24-Jul-2004 11:11 GMT |
| Comment 6 | Fabio Alemagna | Registered user | 24-Jul-2004 11:18 GMT |
| Comment 7 | Anonymous | | 24-Jul-2004 11:23 GMT |
| Comment 8 | Sammy Nordström | | 24-Jul-2004 11:35 GMT |
| Comment 9 | Troels | | 24-Jul-2004 11:56 GMT |
| Comment 10 | Amon_Re | Registered user | 24-Jul-2004 12:44 GMT |
| Comment 11 | XraalE | | 24-Jul-2004 12:50 GMT |
| Comment 12 | Fabio Alemagna | Registered user | 24-Jul-2004 13:24 GMT |
|
| Pegasos "too cheap" rumours debunked : Comment 13 of 68 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by corpse on 24-Jul-2004 14:08 GMT | In reply to Comment 12 (Fabio Alemagna):
" 1) The LCD monitor"
LCD panels are seriously cheap within the industry unless your looking for a pixel perfect class 1 device. Higher prices are attached because they're currently a cool thing to have and they're a bastard to give warranty on.
"2) The completely custom mother board (no such standards as ATX in the laptop world)"
The guys that produces the mobo are probably going to produce the case, the drives etc with a laptop, they have standards of their own. ATX is for a board that will go in a third parties case with another third parties drives etc. Having their own standards means they don't have to spend money making it standards compliant.
"3) The very high density of the components, which in turn also means high number of layers on the PCB."
I don't see this being any different from Micro ITX boards, most ATX boards are pretty sparse because they have to be a certain length and contain bus slots.
"4) Higher components costs: RAM costs more, HDD's cost more, and so on."
Eh? The IC's used for Laptop memories are exactly the same as those used for desktops. They're just packed onto a smaller PCB, the cost of production probably works out the same, it's smaller so cheaper on materials but more complex so you pay more on labour. The reason it's more expensive for the consumer is the "laptop" factor, laptops don't shift at the rate desktops do.
The HDD well .. my Fujitsu lappy has a Fujitsu drive, probably cuts the costs ;). Lets not forget that most of the companies producing laptops also produce components. Batteries are probably the most expensive thing for laptops costing around a tenth of the whole unit price for a replacement
"5) Costs of the research involved in getting the computer to, say, not melt for the heat it generates and still not have 4 fans which cool it down."
You haven't used a recent laptop have you? "Ow my legs are burning" comes to mind.
N.B. You can pick up a decent 14" laptop for under the ¡ò600 mark these days. |
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