True, but I think it might be relevant, as verifiability could affect the way Purism approaches sourcing the components to get through the stocking process. I’m no expert, though.
Chip manufacturers don’t change anything that can affect device performance on a given part number. ISO-9000 rules keep product performance consistant, despite up-revs to fix any silicon bugs that might turn up after production starts. This is in a perfect world which under ISO standards is usually (although not always) perfect. The goal is to provide perfect product every time with defects in the less than 1/1000000 range, to avoid the customer having to re-test product themselves, from every order they receive. Theoretically, Purism has left R&D behind with respect to their Librem 5 Evergreen hardware. That is what shipping announcements are all about. Ramping-up production doesn’t start until after the product is locked-in from a Design Engineering point of view, at least with respect to hardware. With production, that ramp makes or breaks the success of the product. A successful ramp-up provides return on investment and profits. Purism should have snatched this opportunity up as their reward. Instead they made the decision months or maybe even years ago, to punt lightly with no real ramp being feasible, given those months/years-old decisions.
Apologies everyone, English is not my first language.
If I order a Librem 5 USA edition
a. will I receive it faster than a regular Librem 5; and
b. a Purism support member has advised me via email a few days ago that they are 3 backordered by 3 months.
With this new article being posted, will I still get my Librem 5 USA in August 2021?
It doesn’t seem like anyone outside of Purism knows when you will receive your Librem 5 USA, and the Purism people will probably not provide more detail than is in the blog post about shipping timelines.
The blog post implies that you will receive your Librem 5 USA before other people receive their regular Librem 5’s starting October 2021, but I would advise skepticism about any Purism shipping timelines at this point.
I hope you get your phone soon! Especially with the camera progressing, the Librem 5 is an extremely exciting product.
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Thank you for your response.
Obviously, with the history of the shipping I am concerned, but I am invested in the idea of the product, more than the product itself.
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The new article itself contains a table. The table sets out Purism’s expectations for what the supply chain will look like and what the implications are, for each product. It specifically identifies that expectations for the Librem 5 USA are different from expectations for the Librem 5.
My interpretation of that table is that if you order a Librem 5 USA then you will get it (much) sooner than if you order a Librem 5 - and for the Librem 5 USA “within Q2” (so early than August 2021?). On the other hand, the order page says “in a few months”.
In the current climate, exactly how much weight you give to forecasts I leave to you. 
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Maybe Purism was caught off guard, but I think it more likely that Purism did foresee the coming parts shortage (given Nicole Faerber’s comments), but it didn’t have the cash on hand to order all the parts that it needed, so it was waiting for more orders to get enough cash to pay for more producition in small lots with JIT manufacturing. In ordinary times, this would have worked, but we aren’t living in ordinary times.
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I disagree. When you have 100 products, you don’t care if one of them will not be competitive. For Purism, every single product strongly influences the revenue, so they are definitely not immune to that. And you absolutely cannot predict the demand for Librem 5 or 14.
Another thing is possible hardware defect in the phone. What happens if you ship 10k broken Librem 5 phones? You can go bankrupt after that. For just in time development, you can adjust the schematics on the go. I guess that was the plan.
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When you have several thousands of pre-paid orders, it’s the same thing as if you had magical powers and could see in to the future, to know exactly how many orders you will get next month or next year. You don’t need magical powers. You’ve already got the actual orders in-hand. This was my point about Purism being immune or should be immune to market risks with respect to how they make provisions to purchase new hardware inventory to meet their back order commitments.
I understand that the pre-order money is also being used to cover overhead and R&D. But it seems unreasonable to be caught completely unprepared when some provisioning should have been completed and parts on-hand for at least some product to continue to ship.
I am glad to see that some Librem 5 USA editions will ship in Q2 of 2021. If I understand correctly, some Librem 5 USA Editions should then ship out before the end of this coming June.
When no one is getting their product, I worry. When at least a few people continue to receive their orders, the worry changes to disappointment about the wait.
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Speaking of availability of chips, I’m selling an antique printer interface board on ebay. Per my own description:
… **It contains three Zilog Speaking of availability of chips, I’m selling an antique printer interface board on ebay. Per my own description:
… It contains three Zilog Z-80 chips*
- Z-80 CPU
- Z-80 CTC (Counter Timer Channel)
- Z-80 DART (Dual Asynchronous Receiver-Transmitter)
So I looked up other Zilog Z80 chips on ebay, you can get a single chip for 5 bucks upwards of up to “kits” for 50 bucks.
Yes I know this thread is about new and modern chips, you can’t build a new laptop or a cell phone these says with a Z80, (at least I don’t think you can) I digressed to entertain. you may go back to worrying about the supply chain now.
Addendum. I found the manual for this card. Includes schematics down to the component level and the definition of the pins.
eBay item reference
https://www.ebay.com/itm/133768487734
For me, supporting this project is not an option. I need to get rid of the Google jail that I am willing to make do with just phone calls and text support.
Everything else is a nice to have, I just need to be free.
I appreciate the updates and would encourage Purism to think more updates are better.
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That’s why I got my wife a flip style Jitterbug. Although she had to get used to pressing numbers in repetitive sequence to get the 2nd and 3rd lletter on a key. The support is good, there’s always a human being at the toll free number. Although it is probably tied to the droid system, it is so different you don’t notice it, there are no intrusive ads and the carrier isn’t giving you status texts about your bill at any hour.
Accepted. Therefore please take a look at: “5 Reasons Why the World is Running out of Chips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SREbl7Mpw2g”.
You could be a very wonderful husband and for Christmas you could get her a deGoogled Pixel 4a with GrapheneOS on it. I know where you can get one very reasonably priced. I upgraded to a Pixel 5 with Graphene and just got ahold of a used (shelfsitter) Librem 5.
Good News?
TrendForce believes that 7/6nm capacity utilization rate will decline marginally to 95~99% in 2H22 due to product mix conversion, while 5/4nm processes will remain near full load, driven by several new products.
The I.MX8M is an older one and have 8 nm right? So it might be that there is no relaxation on that Market. Cause it will be used on Cars too. Yes is not sure that this will solve the Supply Chain issues, cause what today was the CPU could tomorrow be another part, or just shipping the cpus over the ocean.
I would want to share that small good news, like a candle in the wind.
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I think imx8 is build on the 28nm process node, although info on the net is scarce.
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Yes, very good one, thanks for sharing!
According to the link you provided here the i.MX 8M processor is produced within the 12-inch fabs: “The same situation has also occurred in mature 12-inch processes. However, since 12-inch products are more diverse and their production cycle generally takes at least one quarter, coupled with upgrades to some product specifications, trends such as process transition have not been affected by broader short-term economic fluctuations. As a result, overall production capacity utilization rate can still be maintained at a high operational watermark of approximately 95%. Compared with operating rates that easily hit 100% in the past two years, production line operation has gradually normalized and stabilized, demonstrating a steady balancing of resource allocation.”
As directly related:
Recent NXP® official overview is here (as always): https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/supporting-information/IMX8LAYERCMPR.pdf.
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I just hope that this crisis will solved for you too, soon. But you are right the article do not mention 28nm. Only:
According to TrendForce research, the capacity utilization rate of eight-inch nodes (including 0.35-0.11μm) may decline the most.
I just hope 0.28μm include this. And yes, i am still not sure about. And the prediction of that economic expert just talk about the last half of 2022. I just wanted to share some kind of hope.
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