As far as I understand, 500 PCB boards are produced, as plan was to order next batch ones all these are used. Next batch may be new CPU board.
It may be, but it may also be a new batch of boards with the TI SOC. I think ED had sourced some components in the amount needed for preorders or even more, I don't remember which ones.
so even if the new CPU board was ready (which might take long until it is designed, prototyped, tested, sofware set up and brought to shipping order), even
if the new CPU board was ready to ship, ED might have to continue shipping the old board until he empties his stock of components. Otherwise he may have to
throw away SOCs or memory chips, or whatever (or use them for a different device, but that sounds very far fetched).
The price might also be different, but that is maybe easier to fix.
In any case I can't imagine that producing the remaining PCBs with the current design to fulfill the pending orders can take longer than designing, testing and producing a new PCB.
So ED may not buy any more components for the current design, but at least he may want to use what he has. The board is complex enough that producing only 500 units may make
little economic sense (although fullfiling all preorders won't change much, it must be twice or thrice the number, not orders of magnitude more). The design cost must be divided
between the number of produced units, and if that's only 500 it's going to be even more expensive than thought.
On the other hand a new design may mean more customers, (upgrades for Pyra owners + more Pyras sold to new customers) so it makes sense to sell them as soon as possible.
But current preorderers were never promised a Rockchip SOC.
Anyway I think the two months needed to fulfill all preorders with TI SOC will be shorter than the two months needed to have the RK board ready to ship, so there won't be any dilemma.
