False Economy of Skimped Hardware

Continuing the series on designing for longevity, a couple of thoughts on skimping on hardware. 

Of course less capable chips are less expensive. They even do not need to be less costly to manufacture, but simply a smaller / slower chip is positioned to be a lower cost part in comparison to high end parts. But because most of the products today are defined by software and software upgrades, contrary to hardware upgrades, do not have negative impact on the environment, it is fundamentally important the hardware should have room to accommodate such updates for many years.

Skimping on hardware is simply a false economy. Typically we are talking about sub-dollar or single-digit dollar amounts for a chip versus the costs of replacing the whole product built around that chip.

One example is my (now 7 years old) Philips Android TV. It has a nice 55" 4k LED panel and a good set of speakers. Unfortunately the Android subsystem (which was already limited at the time of purchase) is completely not capable of handling any more updates. Which means I should throw away this whole 55-inch TV and buy a new one. Fortunately, thanks to Google TV and HDMI CEC, I have been able to upgrade it to more or less maintain the ease of use of a "smart" TV. But definitely a large TV set should be built around a processor/memory subsystem which is capable of accepting software updates for 10+ years.

Another example - from my business turf - are the Bluetooth LE chipsets. They come in variety of memory configurations and the market has been expecting a continuous stream of feature upgrades. We have several teams which continue working on these new features. And of course at some point the new features will not fit into the smaller chips. Our customers know this, but to be competitive they often select the lower end chips to allow them keeping the lowest price of the end product. Which is a completely false economy the price competition is forcing them into.

The question is how to incentivize vendors who decide putting in more capable hardware? Probably by educating the market about the benefits of the future upgrades. Very uphill battle, unfortunately. As typically what they compare is what is here/now. Of course they will lament about the lack of upgrades in future, but very often the buy decisions are short sighted.