Hello,
Keil support did not reply yet - but am I correct in assuming that RL-ARM is now a part of MDK, and that each user needs to have a RL-ARM license paid for separately in order to be able to use FlashFS/TCPNet etc. (many samples in MDK 4.20 are broken, but the one that I did manage to compile failed to link complaining that my license is insufficient - that did not happen with MDK 4.14 !) ? If so, this is a HUGE expense. If my boss asks for my opinion (and I think he will) - we're going open source!
I agree somewhat with what you are saying but have you addressed this directly to Keil Sales? Bradford
There is no seminal doubt in my mind that they won't even bother to pick up the phone or pass an email to somebody that matters. Do you really believe some oligarchical pharaoh that happens to be a sales guy for Keil/ARM will even notice a small company with 6 or 7 MDK licenses? No people, it's won't be happening. The only option is to take of ourselves: find other solutions that don't stem creativity and productivity.
ARM's stated aim in acquiring Keil was to encourage the migration from 8/16-bit processors (for which Keil were famous) to ARM (for which, at the time, they weren't).
One of the key perceived barriers to migration from 8/16-bit to 32-bit processors is the tool cost - Keil seem to be working hard to reinforce this perception!
ARM's whole Cortex-M0/3 push is also aimed at winning ground from 8/16-bit processors - this pricing strategy cannot possibly help that!
Very acceptable results are now achievable with free GCC/Eclipse-based tools - Keil need to be really careful that they don't price themselves out of the market...
Andy,
You are entirely right. Think of this: A typical Cortex M0 chips costs 1 euro. Why should a development tool cost 4200 times the hardware? Again - if somebody from is reading this - we don't mind paying, OK? We don't mind paying. But there are prices and there are prices, and I, for one, am getting the feeling that it is not worth the money. As I stated above, I have free of charge working alternatives for Keil's stuff that are used and reviewed by thousands of people from all over the world - why pay, then? I can even get rid of of RTX by porting FreeRTOS to LPC1700/1800 family. Oh, yeah.
We are currently stretched with developers, but for our latest ARM chip addition, we did go for gcc since we already had enough working code to get it to boot and with gcc we can rotate the workload on more developers without having to tell a customer that we want a very premium tool fee to activate one more resource. Extra problematic since in some situations, our customers wants to be able to write their own additional software for our products and they are often selling to few units on their own to be able to afford the Keil tools.
For one or two other products, we have been looking into porting the existing code to be able to license the software to some of our customers, allowing them to create own rebranded variantes while letting them handle their own feature extensions.
“The Keil tools are focused on microcontrollers, and we are happy to support the GNU tool chain,” said York. “Code Red is building a low-cost tool chain based on the GNU tools. There are other tools coming up later this year [2009] that I cannot discuss. We want to do things that fit into the MPU world.”
www.electronicsweekly.com/.../arms-cortex-m0-processor-how-it-works.htm
That's dated 04 March 2009 - so "coming up later this year" should be well-established by now?
Tamir, I totally agree
IT IS A DAMNED SHAME
There are prices that can be accepted as reasonable (imo Keil always was close to or a bit above this limit) And there are prices that make you feel like an idiot or being mugged if you pay them. What a pity if this all really becomes true. But I fear it already is. We all know there are engineers that want to earn a living and work hard and well (mostly) and we ARE WILLING TO PAY.
Andy, I think you should not put a CPU and its development tool into a price relation. Just imagine the functionality a 6502 had and now look at LPC17xx. If you then put the inflation to the prices, they are (were) acceptable at a much higher level of complexity compared to the 8 bit tools that were damn expensive too.
I think the guys at ARM must be COMPLETELY NUTS. (btw ARM in German means POOR and they really seem to be short of sales brains there) Why not increase the core licenses by a 1/1000 .....
So yes, I am interested in hints for alternatives as well. Up to now, I managed to get around Eclipse, because I am not world's biggest Java fan ;)
Somehow, Keil haven't realized that the amount of code in a project doesn't reflect the size of the budget a company has.
Per, you are so right. And no, we all do not sell millions of units a year .... so development tool costs do matter.
If I was force to bet, I'd say they want to become attractive to realize a higher price when acquired by Apple and then "Keil" is going to end line Qt did at Nokia
Idiots ............
I remember a phone call with a sales person in Munich last summer / early fall. (VERY friendly btw) They already knew that some major changes were to come and suggested early updates.
Like it or not, it is a fact of life!
It is a commonly stated reason by people "stuck" with an 8-bit processor who say they can't afford to move to a (better-suited) 32-bit processor "because the tools are too expensive"
A thing with Keil's ARM tools is that they cover everything from the smallest Cortex-M0 to the hugest ARM-9.
Maybe Keil need to consider a low-cost "lite" version for the low-end Cortex-Mx; eg, with microlib only, no floating point, etc...?
I've started a discussion in the ARM-Based Group at Linkedin:
www.linkedin.com/.../Has-Keil-lost-plot-on-85447.S.47395661
"Sources close to ARM" suggest that this thread has been noticed...
The interesting thing is the Cortex chips that can run without a single assembler line - the core takes care of setting up the environment for calling a C reset handler and standard C ISR functions.
With chip manufacturers supplying reasonable kick-start sample code, the need for the Keil simulator is decreasing while at the same time the cost of it is going up.
Most other companies that sees such an equation does what all hw product owners does, i.e. very carefully checks the price structure and sees how a product can be sold cheaper but in higher volumes to still maintain the profit. Almost all companies tries to get more customers since they are forced to sell at a lower price. Keil seems to go the other route - fewer customers but each customer charged more.
I don't think the solution is to cut the tools into huge number of sizes. That means that customers will have to look at their component choices based on their Keil support.
The main reason for profit is in the amount of support Keil has to give to each customer.
So maybe they should instead differentiate the support - sell cheaper licenses with no support except bug fixes. Each such license will be almost 100% profit, since they may be sold completely electronically - just costing some administration to register the customer, and the bandwidth for people to download the compiler and service updates.
That would mean that small companies can afford to start with Keil tools even for short series of cheaper products. And when they do get into a critical situation, they can decide if they want to upgrade to a more expensive license with support included, or if they want to pay a per-issue fee for getting help.
But the goal must be to get more people to jump on the ARM bandwagon - picking market shares from Pic, AVR, 8051, MPC430, ...
Going the other route - only selling to fortune 500 companies means there will be too few people using the tools and finding bugs. So there will be few customers paying huge fees to get low-quality stuff. PC compilers are so good because there are tens of thousands of users who tests everything in the tools and sends back good error reports. If user A can't write a good error report, then user B, C, or D will manage to write something that does help locate find and solve a problem.
Per,
I fully support your proposals.
You posted
"Almost all companies tries to get more customers since they are forced to sell at a lower price. Keil seems to go the other route - fewer customers but each customer charged more."
I not sure if it applied fully, but a term I encountered recently could characterize this situation: "the economics of (customer) extinction"...
An open letter to Keil/ARM:
"Dear Madam/Sir,
Our local distributer of the Keil/ARM tool-chain has informed us that we better upgrade our tools soon because the prices of the RL-ARM library license is going up from 3400 euro per seat to 4190 euro per seat starting 1st of April.
With all due respect, I must point out to you that this is entirely unacceptable. I have a lot of respect for your mostly excellent tools, but I believe that in this particular instance you are hurting your own core business: There is a large number of commercial and indeed, outstanding open source alternatives available with more of less comparable functionality and occasionally with better documentation. I believe that a significant number of small to medium companies will refuse to pay these prices, and will search and find more cost effectives ways to get the job done . I cannot speak for others - but I can tell you that this is most definitely the trend of my employer. You're playing with fire! Wasn't your stated goal to promote the usage of low cost 32-bit microcontrollers? Do you really believe this pricing policy coalesces with this goal?
Kind regards,
Tamir Michael"