How We See Embedded Processing

I will admit, I am new to the blog scene. So when, encouraged by EDN, I started off writing the first piece, I purposely chose a subject that I knew would stir up some controversy—hoping to get the "blog" rolling. The number of comments posted confirms that I succeeded, perhaps a bit beyond my expectations (smile). Let me tell you up front that I don't think I have the perfect answer to all your concerns and comments, but at the same time I want you to know that I had already heard most of them before (big smile). 

First of all, I am aware of the possibility to run "promotions". That is, from time to time to ship batches of boards for free to launch a new tool or a new product. In fact, Microchip does continuously run such promotions. Sometimes the tools are given away for free to seminar attendees, sometimes to participants of a particular contest, or to readers of a given magazine. Sometimes they take the form of heavy discounts for educators, consultants and students. But, although I agree with some of your comments—promotions do grab the potential users' attention and help win new adopters—they really fall under a different chapter: it is in their nature to be limited in scope and time.

My main concern in the previous blog was with mid/long-term sustainable tools, if you recall. More interesting, perhaps, was the opinion expressed in some of the comments (SSEA and Dave) that no designer should have to pay to evaluate a product. In fact, I agree strongly with this statement. As you might know, we do provide FREE samples of all our products at sample.microchip.com. Now, imagine how much fun it would be if car manufacturers where to follow our example! But more seriously, perhaps a smaller number of readers might be aware of "loaner" programs, where field application engineers actually lend tools to individual designers/companies to support the development of specific projects.

Although, in the first blog I deliberately focused on evaluation boards (hardware tools), some of the comments received referred to software tools and the cost of C compilers in particular. This could take us on a tangent, but I will quickly indulge—since it shows more a problem of "awareness" than of actual support. On our tools site, you will find the so-called "Student Versions" of all the company-owned compilers, and demonstration versions of all third-party compilers, supporting even the smallest PIC microcontrollers (including the PIC10F series in 6-pin packages). We went to extreme measures to make sure that the evaluation versions are really functional. In fact, you can write some pretty compelling applications with them, without missing much any of the advanced features reserved to the fully licensed versions.

[Editor's note, 7/16/2007: We inadvertently left off the following three paragraphs when publishing this blog post on 7/2/2007. Some of the user comments refer to the accidentally incomplete version. We apologize for the error.]

To prove it, let me point you to a recently published book on PIC24 programming (or I should say "flying"…). It comes with an attached CD-ROM containing, among other things, the MPLAB C30 compiler (student version) and source code for numerous applications of growing complexity—culminating with a media player based on the Explorer 16 demonstration board. Actually, this shameless plug (if you did follow the link, you might have noticed that I was the author of that book—wide open smile) gives me an idea: perhaps the price range of a typical engineering book could be a good reference for our tools limbo stick?

Finally I should address Vignesh, who suggested an old trick—shipping bare boards together with instructions for the user to mount them; and Sujit before him who had recommended spontaneous support within a community of users. Both solutions have their appeal, but they also seem to suggest a dichotomy in the target user base. Sort of like: have real tools for the professionals, and then let the rest have the crumbs. Mind you, I am not saying that there shouldn't be strong community support for tools and products—on the contrary. I just don't think it is fair for a leading manufacturer to drop the ball so to speak, and leave customers to their own devices while calling that "support".

Otherwise I am pretty much in tune with Mike2; you (the developer) better know how to split your cost among your customers, and how to get paid for your work in the first place! As the saying goes, "in business there are only two types of companies: those that make money and those that lose money." In the long term, you don't want to work with the latter.

—Lucio Di Jasio, Microchip