12-11-2018, 01:44 PM
We can probably work with whatever Allwinner releases. With the current software we have today it is unclear if we can build a sellable system. Allwinner has made a good set of tools for automating parking lots, but not very useful to a company that does not sell parking lot cameras.
There is always a trade off. Keep the technology closed. Then Allwinner has to supply all of the tools, all of the support, fix all of the bugs. And if they don't do that then their customers can't ship and you don't sell many chips. Keeping tech closed comes with a very high support cost.
Or open up the technology. Then sometimes you get lucky and a person will write a popular tool that uses your hardware. And that results in sales from places you never previously thought your chip would be useful for. This doesn't always happen, but when it does the payoff can be huge. Consider the effect of Arduino. Allwinner has an unusual chip with the V5. If they were to release more info on EVE/CVE AI researchers would be able to make use of it. Many of those AI researchers are very smart people and they will write excellent software for the V5.
Here's an example. The EVE/CVE hardware can almost certainly do very accurate spoken hot word detection for services like Alexa. But with the tools I have available, I can't program it to do this. This is an application of the hardware that Allwinner has not considered and it's an application that could potentially sell a lot of chips.
There is always a trade off. Keep the technology closed. Then Allwinner has to supply all of the tools, all of the support, fix all of the bugs. And if they don't do that then their customers can't ship and you don't sell many chips. Keeping tech closed comes with a very high support cost.
Or open up the technology. Then sometimes you get lucky and a person will write a popular tool that uses your hardware. And that results in sales from places you never previously thought your chip would be useful for. This doesn't always happen, but when it does the payoff can be huge. Consider the effect of Arduino. Allwinner has an unusual chip with the V5. If they were to release more info on EVE/CVE AI researchers would be able to make use of it. Many of those AI researchers are very smart people and they will write excellent software for the V5.
Here's an example. The EVE/CVE hardware can almost certainly do very accurate spoken hot word detection for services like Alexa. But with the tools I have available, I can't program it to do this. This is an application of the hardware that Allwinner has not considered and it's an application that could potentially sell a lot of chips.