What is a System-on-Chip (SoC), and why do we care if they are open source?

Re:What is a System-on-Chip (SoC), and why do we care if the... by kabdib on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:29PM (#25042813)

More eyes on a design would help.

Proprietary SOCs suck when you run into a bug in system bring-up (and if you are going off the beaten track even a little, you will), and you have a vendor that:

- Doesn't believe you. In fact, is quite vocal about not believing you.

- Takes your hard-won repro code (with "a possible workaround, what do you think?") and is silent for months;

- Finally publishes a TR about that bug, along with your very own workaround code, verbatim and unattributed and you never even got an email acknowledging the issue.

... and after nearly a year of chasing the stupid thing down, as a last resort grants you a five minute phone audience with the chip designer. Sixty seconds into the problem description he says, "Oh, I know what's going on..." and proceeds to fix everything by telling you what parts of the documentation are lies. Your workaround turns out to be how you have to do it. You feel a little ill.

An open source SOC would not necessarily be better understood by more people, but it probably couldn't be worse.

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Re:What is a System-on-Chip (SoC), and why do we care if the... by jasonjayr on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:43PM (#25042861)

That sounds oddly specific, are you okay?

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Re:What is a System-on-Chip (SoC), and why do we care if the... by ohazi on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @12:19AM (#25043017)

I've had something closely resembling what OP described happen to me twice. In both cases the relevant chip errata document is behind an NDA, but in one of them my bug was the first one on the list.

That one was a "don't use these particular memory locations, or disable the cache (which makes the chip unusably slow)" kind of bug, and I'm still simultaneously amazed that I managed to figure it out and angry that I had to.

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Re:What is a System-on-Chip (SoC), and why do we care if the... by monocasa on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @01:57AM (#25043420)

Been in a similar position too. Didn't end up getting it added to the errata since we reported it against an engineering sample, but just added a sentence about how 'this status bit flag is "unreliable"' buried somewhere in the middle of the first public release of the reference manual without any warnings as to what that implies downstream. At least it went in the real docs I guess. But this was after them ghosting us about this, so the whole encounter still left a bad taste in my mouth.

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Re:What is a System-on-Chip (SoC), and why do we care if the... by octoberfranklin on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @02:00AM (#25043441)

The NDA problem in the SoC world is completely out of control.

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Re:What is a System-on-Chip (SoC), and why do we care if the... by deepstack on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @03:32AM (#25043867)

these are the best comments in HNews! It amazing the amount of incompetence there are in tech industry now days.

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Re:What is a System-on-Chip (SoC), and why do we care if the... by kabdib on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @12:30PM (#25048506)

I'm fine, thanks for asking :-)

It was a specific example, one of many from a vendor that I will not name, and over a decade ago.

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Re:What is a System-on-Chip (SoC), and why do we care if the... by detaro on Monday November 09, 2020 @11:45PM (#25042872)

And sadly, actually getting to talk to someone at the end is the impressive part here from what I've seen...

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Re:What is a System-on-Chip (SoC), and why do we care if the... by andi999 on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @02:26AM (#25043546)

Why do you feel ill? This is how building up expert knowledge works.

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Re:What is a System-on-Chip (SoC), and why do we care if the... by Doxin on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @02:38AM (#25043606)

Because their year-long arduous journey could, apparently, be avoided with a 60 second chat with the right person.

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Re:What is a System-on-Chip (SoC), and why do we care if the... by andi999 on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @02:52AM (#25043682)

Yes. Even in tech it comes down, it doesnt matter what you know, it matters whom you know.

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Re:What is a System-on-Chip (SoC), and why do we care if the... by meditative on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @07:09AM (#25045058)

> it doesnt matter what you know, it matters whom you know.

while technically the literal reading of your sentence is not incorrect, the phrase above is referring to nepotism which is not the issue OP has.

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Re:What is a System-on-Chip (SoC), and why do we care if the... by tinus_hn on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @08:01AM (#25045458)

Would you have accepted his answer though? It was the same answer given in the first place.

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Re:What is a System-on-Chip (SoC), and why do we care if the... by kabdib on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @12:42PM (#25048649)

I would have believed the chip designer. He explained the problem (an issue involving synchronization between different clock domains in this case) and why the workaround (that WE had to figure out, without help from the vendor) was correct.

The sample drivers written by the company were all buggy, by the way. They wound up doing a cut-and-paste with our workaround in their next board support drop.

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Re:What is a System-on-Chip (SoC), and why do we care if the... by andi999 on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @11:16AM (#25047621)

What do you mean by accepting his answer? What alternative do you propose.

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