When Pyra would be cheaper? When There would be new replacement boards?


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okay Bernd I understand that they have costs they much cover, but they clearly stated they would have it paid back once they manufacture and sell 1500 pieces. But it doesn't mean they would lower price there... so maybe rephrasing it: how much thousands pieces must be sold that it makes the Team to really consider lowering price significantly?

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I mean different boards than first ones. I am especially awaiting CPU board with AMD ZEN and at least 8GB RAM, but ARM 64bit with 8GB of RAM or more would be also nice.

Sorry Bernd you were not so helpful

if there would be better CPU-board than the official first one I could afford rised price, but I hope after Semester Pyra would get a bit cheaper (but it is only preassumption, I want to be sure if there are chances) or I can buy it at same price but with significantly better CPU-Board
 
1. Short answer is no one knows. Lowering the price significantly would probably require orders of magnitude higher production volume. I doubt these are anything ED can look up in a price chart, but rather separately negotiated deals. The profit margin is already quite low as is.

2. Short answer is no one knows. Probably when a suitable SoC becomes available for a small project such as this to purchase with enough extra performance per power or features to justify the possible incompatibility.
 
1
okay Bernd I understand that they have costs they much cover, but they clearly stated they would have it paid back once they manufacture and sell 1500 pieces. But it doesn't mean they would lower price there... so maybe rephrasing it: how much thousands pieces must be sold that it makes the Team to really consider lowering price significantly?
E.D. have to pay back the investors of the Pandora, the development costs, running costs,...
So there need to be sold much more Pyras to make E.D. able to lower the price.
I think this will be after 8000 to 10000 sold Pyras.
But no one (even E.D.) knews when that will be exactly.

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I mean different boards than first ones. I am especially awaiting CPU board with AMD ZEN and at least 8GB RAM, but ARM 64bit with 8GB of RAM or more would be also nice.

Sorry Bernd you were not so helpful

if there would be better CPU-board than the official first one I could afford rised price, but I hope after Semester Pyra would get a bit cheaper (but it is only preassumption, I want to be sure if there are chances) or I can buy it at same price but with significantly better CPU-Board
As far I knew it will take at least 2 to 3 years and enough interested people for a new processor board.

I'm sorry, that I'm not that helpful.
 
AFAIK 200€ of Pyra's Price are the for Development Costs so it could become cheaper as soon as those are in again.

E.D. have to pay back the investors of the Pandora, the development costs, running costs,...
I think this will be after 8000 to 10000 sold pyras.

@EvilDragon itself said that its already after 3000 Sold Pyras:
EvilDragon said:
Well, while 1500 sold Pyras get us enough funds back to produce them from stock, we still have to pay back 300k EUR to our investors who supported us when the Pandora was in an almost bottomless pit.

To be able to do that, we need to sell a total of 3000 units.

If we can achieve that, I'll be a happy camper. Finally!
 
Thanks! now Bernd you ARE helpful :)
for replacement board it seems it is more time than I can aford waiting, so it seems I am stuck with the default cpu-board. (Glory for ED that Pyra is socketed, I will need only cpu-board replaced if anything).

hmmm 8000 Pyras? I hope that after year or even half it gets sold, thanks for info. sadly my guessing isn't precise since we are after "hurray" customers period

i think I will wait a few months and watch the price. if I could get it for half the price I would probably order it today, but I really understand net costs...

why is it so time consuming for design of cpu board?

EDIT: So rather 3000 Pyras? Yay! this can be achieved after a quater of year, so I can be very sure it happen before I intend to buy the device... I am student AGAIN and it seems family funds me someting if I finish semester properly. It would be Pyra Mobile of course:)
 
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@ lukey:
Yea, but there are running expenses and savings for future projects.
That's why I think, where will be no reduced price the first 3 to 5 years.

@Yuji Sakai
I don't think there will that much Pyras will be sold in the first year.
As far I remember, only that much Pandoras got sold.

A new processor board takes that long because:
* only a hand full of people work on the hardware
* the manufacturing of the pcb takes much time -> long test/production cycle times
* the drivers have to be updated / written
* there have to be negotiations with the chip producer IF he want to sell to E.D. at this low volume and how much it cost
* there have to be enough people that are willing to buy a new processor board
* the new processor board have to be tested bevore the production run
* . . . .
 
At least AMD chips should be able to be sold on low volume, I am sure.
hopefully after first test/production cycles you should be able to make enterprise prices, not customer ones.
there are many people which want buy something x86 and ZEN is 64bit (perfect for linux+wine)

so this is good

but i understand that you need: producing, testing, testing, producing etc.
and hardware debbuging is much more costly than software one :(
 
For the Pandora it was after a long while, but the development also lasted a long while.
I would not count on a discounted Pyra soon, these units (Pandora) have a pretty steady price.
Updated CPU boards will only available if a lot of them could be sold, which will only happen if lots of Pyras will be sold.
 
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  1. Designing a new CPU board take A LOT of money (+ work + time).
  2. Reducing price of Pyra reduces the profit margin for ED, meaning less money can be saved for further development.
Can't have both at the same time.

Other thing to consider is that new CPU still needs to work with the same heat dissipation capacity. OMAP5 seems to generate around 5 Watts or so when loaded (link). But AMD APUs start off at 10 Watts or higher. Need to see what AMD Zen can pull off when it's finally released (will it be enough?).
 
i'd love to see future Pyra CPUs use 5W or less power. find the best processor within that thermal envelope. take the battery life to the moon!

but yea, we won't get future ones if we don't pay for current ones :)
 
"Leaks" claim that the lowest power zen chip will be 5 Watts but there's no way to know if the leak is real and if it is it's unlikely that 5W is what the Zen APU will actually sit at as many of AMDs and Intels chips actually run well over their listed TPD under even light load.
 
The side conversation...
There are also differences in how different manufacturers state heat generation. The OMAP5 is fairly honest in 5W TDP for the SoC itself. Intel's x7-78750 advertises "2W SDP" when the SoC itself is capable of probably generating closer to 10W +/- when running 'continuously flat out'.

Within the phone/tablet space there is a concept that the SoC will only be running at maximum load for short bursts and that the heat generated from those short bursts can be captured within a heat sink then dissipated over a longer time frame while the SoC is under less stress. At least that is my understanding of the 'SDP' ratings.

So - an SoC with a '2W SDP' might be possible - but expect it to clock down heavily if subjected to continuous 100% CPU/GPU use inside a package (Prya) with a TDP envelope of @3-5W passive.

The original poster's conversation...
The Pandora was originally far under priced - roughly $250 charged for a device that cost considerably more than that to actually manufacture. So, it's price went UP a lot after the first round of manufacturing. The Pyra is priced very honestly - and with some flexibility. The pre-order process is based on deposits, not purchase. In theory, the price could actually go up (if it needed to) and people would have the option of going with the then price. Where ED has priced it and the logic he used in creating that price are pretty sound though, so I don't expect that to be an issue.

However, when you say that you think it should cost a whole lot less, it's a bit like denigrating the project itself. Considering that the device will be, in theory, capable of replacing a backpack full of equipment with a device that will fit in my pocket, I place a high value on it. Retail 4G smart phones with 4GB of RAM and 32GB NAND and single uSD expansion card slot and no keyboard, no SD slots, no full size USB slots, no HDMI output, no discrete charging port, etc... those go in the $800+ range despite being manufactured in quantities of a million plus.

So, stating an expectation that the Pyra could or should be less expensive than the pre-order price feels a bit insulting.
 
I hope that the sells will surpass the ones for the Pandora... because the device will deserve those... so I'm looking at 10000 to make a round number
 
@EvilDragon itself said that its already after 3000 Sold Pyras:

That's when he can pay back his investors, and this eliminate his personal commitments. He still needs to be able to build a fund for forthcoming developments, and just to be able to pay him and his workers a decent wage. But I'm reasonably confident prices will fall slightly more rapidly than they did for the Pandora - from what I can tell, 1GHz Pandoras's now are worth 80% of what I paid for mine in 2012, ignoring any money paid to Craig's operation to begin with, but by the same measure, I wouldn't expect Pyras to fall to 50% pretty much ever.
 
50% will be availible for my budget. Once it will cost 65% of original price or less, there should be peak on buyers :)
people around me keep talking pyra is twice priced especially with not high cpu board in the price.
I don't want to insult you but there are countries poorer than germany.

Edit : I read it wrongly. Anyway -35% would be much more affordable.
 
50% will be availible for my budget. Once it will cost 65% of original price or less, there should be peak on buyers :)
people around me keep talking pyra is twice priced especially with not high cpu board in the price.
I don't want to insult you but there are countries poorer than germany.

Edit : I read it wrongly. Anyway -35% would be much more affordable.
I would agree with you, but it's a niche product at a fair price for the attention to detail and support you get with it. Having said that, I could foresee a possibility of alternative hardware options using the same case, especially if you're handy with a soldering iron...
 
I could easily see the pre-order down payment being the final price IF it was Nintendo or Samsung or similar selling them in the millions. However they wouldn't use real Linux and would be trying to make more money selling a SDK to developersand take a cut from every game/program sale.
I remember a report I believe was about a year ago that the Galaxy S7 ( or was it 6 at the time) only actually costs Samsung about $200 to make but then again Samsung themselves produce most of the parts. I'll need to look it up to be sure on the actual numbers and recall not being convicted by their math so take it with a grain of salt.
 
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