Re: Who is working with the SAM9263?


Why would the AT91RM9200DK have been planned for low volume? Are you
saying that the AT91SMA926x-EK boards are expected to be low volume?

Of course not. I have several project in 100ku or higher volume.

What??? You expect to sell 100k units of the AT91SMA926x-EK
boards??? How can you call that low volume??? I think you are
confusing the EK with the chip.


Reading too carelessly.
The SAM9260EK is low cost from the AT91 point of view.
This is based on their culture which is coming from the ASIC world.
The AVR32 guys are coming from the 8 bit world and have a different culture.

I expect that the reorganisation moving both groups under one hat,
will result in cross-pollination.
This should result in lower cost AT91 tools.



Of course this is self fullfilling prophesy when you price one board
at $69 and the other at $1000!

Surprisingly we sold 100s of the AT91RM9200DK at $5000
That is not the only measure of the business you can loose from having
high priced evaluation tools.


I know, but if the processor is right for the job, even $5000 is
not a big deal for the right project.


I bet that people coming to Atmel Seminars will be able
to go home with an AVR32 kit.
This is by far the best way to distribute the kits.

BINGO! I can assure you that there is very little difference between
the LPC2xxx and the SAM7xx parts. But much of the LPC business came
from the very low cost units that are out there.

I think that you find that the majority of chip sales are made to very few
companies, and those companies will get what they need for development.

It was important for the AVR and is important for the AVR32 to promote
themselves using low cost tools, because they need to have a lot of users
to make it interesting for tools makers to support the parts.
The AT91 team does not have to invest in promoting the ARM architecture.

The approach to have cheap tools means that you can win
project where basically any part will do.
When you have an edge in the chip, people are prepared to pay for the tool.

Where it is very important, to have low cost tools, I.E at consultants
who need to be familiar with tools in anticipation of
you probably have a discount program for tools.

I watched it grow and much of it was due to the feedback between the
availability of
cheap eval tools and the grassroots popularity of the chips. Each one
fed the other with very rapid growth. There are still any number of
vendors who only provide LPC eval boards and not Atmel. I only know
of one vendor who provides Atmel support and not NXP.

You may get wins at the customers who show on your radar. But there
are any number of customers who select a part for a design before you
know anything about them and it is not infrequent that these projects
are with large customers. I know because I have seen it happen.
Decisions are made without input from the vendor largely based on what
the engineer is familiar with. Low cost eval tools help a great deal
in getting the customer familiar with the parts with a minimum of
management review.


I am well aquainted with your thinking, which I personally share.
I am working hard to move Atmel to a lower cost structure for ARM tools.

Is Atmel not marketing the ARM9 parts as hard as they are the AVR32?

....

So you are saying that you don't provide low cost solutions because
you don't need to?


I think that Atmel can live with $500 board for the ARM9 at the moment
but the reason is really the underlying cost structure.
If/when competition catches up, then this will become a more
important decision factor.

I think that prices will come down before they are needed for this reason
though.

--
Best Regards,
Ulf Samuelsson
This is intended to be my personal opinion which may,
or may not be shared by my employer Atmel Nordic AB


.

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