[Libre-soc-dev] 3d gpu business plan

[Lauri Kasanen]

On Mon, 28 Dec 2020 13:20:32 +0000
Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl at lkcl.net> wrote:

> > The critical question an investor will ask is "what prevents another
> > company from taking the designs, selling them for 0.5% cheaper and thus
> > taking all the market".
>
> 1) our expertise
> 2) the amount of time it will take to get a competitor up to speed.
> 3) if they don't work with us, work with the OpenPOWER Foundation,
> guarantees that they'll take 2-4 years longer.
> 4) the RISC-V Foundation's Membership list shows precisely that
> competitors in exactly the same markets can work together without
> destroying each other.
> 5) the work's incomplete: the 3D drivers aren't available.  this is a
> *massive* task that involves collaboration, not competition.
> 6) the relationships with Pine64, Purism etc.
>
> the list goes on and on.

Playing devil's advocate: that is all pre-release points. What happens
after?

After release, 1-5 have been taken care of by us. Aka we've handled the
NREs, but the product is something anybody with a fab can copy, and
then they have ready drivers too which we helpfully gave them. Thus
they'd reap the profit at that point with little work.

6, half of those will buy the exact same product from a cheaper vendor.
Half would stay, the wider market would buy from whoever is cheapest.

So to be 100% clear: once there's a ready product, ready drivers, which
is open, someone like Mediatek can fab it cheaper than we can. Just by
taking the ready design, no NREs required. None of the points you
listed address this case.

- Lauri