Pull up your SoCs, it's rubber-glove time: European Commission to probe Broadcom over microchip supply deals

The European Commission is rolling up its sleeves and once again donning its tight plastic gloves, as it begins another probe into a chip designer – this time Silicon Valley-based Broadcom. EU antitrust officials allege the biz, which is the world's largest provider of integrated circuits for wired communication devices, has …

[Uffish]

Singapore or Delaware

I thought that Broadcom announced it would relocate its legal address from Singapore to Delaware. Hasn't happened yet? Ah, promises promises.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Singapore or Delaware

And Delaware said it would be friendly to a business needing to buy its only competitor to form a monopoly.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sure some raspberry pi competitors would be eager to get their hands on broadcom chips only the raspberry pi foundation seem able to obtain. That is probably true for all the proprietary chips the raspberry pi uses.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Like any other OEM they will happily sell to you if you want to buy enough of them.

They just aren't in the business of selling you a few dozen parts and holding your hand while you design, for chips with a few cents/unit of profit.

[James Hughes 1]

It's a little more complicated than that! For example, Raspberry Pi have written lots of the firmware blob which is used in the Brcm chip in the Raspberry Pi. Which means that third parties cannot use it without Raspberry Pi permission (unlikely to get that for obvious reasons!). So even if someone can buy the chips (they can), they would not be able to use the latest firmware. So third parties making Pi clones using the same chip isn't going to happen.

And that's just one reason.

[MJB7]

If you want to buy enough of them

I believe Raspberry Pi's original business plan called for them to build something like 1,000 units. Because Ebon Upton was a Broadcom employee at the time, and because it was a charitable enterprise, he managed to persuade Broadcomm to let him build the Pis. This despite the fact their normal minimum order is probably a hundred times that. Any other startup would have a hard time persuading them to do that.

Of course in the end, it turned out that the business plan was inaccurate by the sort of error that would make a cosmologist blush.

[druck]

Re: If you want to buy enough of them

...but in a good way - a very good way!

[James Hughes 1]

Re: If you want to buy enough of them

Actually, he still is an employee of Brcm.

And of course, nowadays, the income stream to Brcm from RP is quite healthy. Brcm do not subsidise RP in any way, so it was good decision in hindsight!