[contingencies]

China-bashing is naive - most of the world's electronics are produced there for a reason. Here's how it works. Projects aren't open shut, and they don't exist in a vacuum. The cost of targeting a new hardware platform is nontrivial. All hardware costs are trivial vs. overall project costs (time, people, shipping, testing, production, packaging, distribution, etc.). Even then, outside of launch-time near-shore marketing-land, the chips currently cost double the old ones. No prior software will run without modification. Even the programming interface is new, which means retooling production code, jigs and fixtures in addition to firmware and schematics. Nowhere did I say "the hardware is worse", rather I said "the hardware is a premature choice for commercial projects with rapid delivery requirements at this time". Understand the difference. I stand by that assessment.

[dragontamer]

> China-bashing is naive - most of the world's electronics are produced there for a reason.

I didn't say that China didn't have most of the world's production. What I said is that a large number of Chinese chips are counterfeit. So when we're talking about discussion points like:

> Even then, outside of launch-time near-shore marketing-land, the chips currently cost double the old ones.

Well, have you done the QA to assure that these "old chip lots" are actually legitimate AVR ATMega328pb or are they some king of counterfeit chip? I know the STM32 chips in a lot of Chinese shops are just clever replicas, and that's key to their lower prices.

I don't fully trust prices, especially of old stock in China.

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China has enormous potential in terms of electronics manufacturing. But the supply chain problem / counterfeit problem certainly exists. No matter how clever their replicas get, there are minor concerns about power-delivery differences or minor differences to the ADC (or whatever). Maybe the counterfeit chips are good enough for your projects, or maybe not. But its still a concern that floats in the back of my mind, especially if the prices are much cheaper than the legitimate sources.

Like: maybe the chips don't sleep quite as low power as a legitimate chip, or the ADC is slightly less linear than a legitimate chip. Etc. etc. Minor differences that with good testing you could actually work with the counterfeit and get a usable product, but a risk nonetheless if you have an old design that depends on the specifications of the original.

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Here's a Hackaday on some STM32 counterfeits they found: https://hackaday.com/2020/10/22/stm32-clones-the-good-the-ba...

[kragen]

> China has enormous potential in terms of electronics manufacturing.

this is like saying 'south africa has enormous potential in terms of diamond mining' or 'the us has enormous potential in terms of mass shootings'. china had enormous potential in terms of electronic manufacturing 30 years ago. today, electronics manufacturing outside of china is a footnote. an increasing number of manufacturers don't bother to produce non-chinese-language datasheets. in this context, if a chip's availability in china is sketchy, that's reason to question its viability

the hackaday article does start with talking about stm32 counterfeits but is mostly about legitimate clones, most of which are improvements over st's chips

[dragontamer]

I dunno why you're so focused on trying to make China look better. It's well acknowledged by pretty much everyone that supply chains in China have a counterfeit problem.

There are pretty much two solutions. Either you more closely handle supply chain issues yourself by buying from the OEM or reputable sources (which increases costs). Or you accept the counterfeits as good enough. Based on this discussion, you've gone with the second option which is fine. But it's something people should know about your argument.

You CANNOT compare prices in the way you've been doing in your argument. That's all I'm saying.

When we compare OEM ATMega328pb vs AVR64DD32, the OEM prices for AVR DD is cheaper. That's the ground truth.

The methodology you've chosen as the basis of your argument is not accounting for the huge, well known risks of counterfeit ATMega328.

[kragen]

you have me confused with someone else; i haven't compared any prices in this thread

i agree that there's a counterfeit problem, and it's worse in china, but that's irrelevant to my argument

i don't think it makes sense to say that i'm trying to make china look better. you're painting a pants-on-head absurd picture of china's role in electronics manufacturing, apparently taken from some kind of incredible propaganda. i'm just giving you the basic facts that everyone agrees on but you don't know yet

[dragontamer]

The issue here is ATmega328 pricing vs AVR DD pricing. Which is the crux of the discussion.

The pricing estimates discussed earlier have to be factored against the well known, widespread counterfeits. Especially because ATMega328 is a well known counterfeited chip, and the Chinese market well known for being full of not only counterfeits in general, but even counterfeits of this specific chip under discussion.

You cannot compare chip prices like the poster did earlier. And all this Chinese vs whatever discussion you're trying to distract me with aside doesn't change the core fact.

[kragen]

i think the pricing is a mostly irrelevant detail, actually, which is why i didn't mention it. what's relevant is availability

you're right that availability of counterfeits isn't real availability, but i think you're vastly exaggerating the seriousness of that problem. a more likely reason for chinese distributors lowering their prices for the atmega328 is that it's not appealing for new designs, so they need to offload their leftover inventory