The SweRV Core are embedded Deep inside the HDD controller. And are completely different to the ARM counterpart you are measuring against. So they dont cost $10, they are measured in cents.
Also a pet peeve of mine, people constantly screwed up the units. "10 SWEs" is rate (cost per time), same as "10 TB of RAM", but "SWE-years" is cost (ie dollars). Many design documents use these inconsistently.
For those doubting you, the going rate for embedded engineers out here in the Denver area where a lot of these SSD controllers are designed is ~$90k. Embedded engineers get peanuts for some reason.
What keeps the price high on these enclosures? In the past the assumption had been that it's because Intel is charging a lot for the TB3 controllers, but unless I'm reading it wrong, the prices on those look to be very reasonable (sub $10) at this point: https://ark.intel.com/products/codename/56890/Alpine-Ridge.
Does anyone have a BOM estimate of this (or any of the competing) Thunderbolt 3 enclosures?
The price of a DE10-Nano is $135 ($115 for academic use.)
Anyone who thinks that Terasic sells these at a loss doesn’t have a clue about volume pricing of FPGAs. And as a special Intel partner, there’s little doubt that Terasic has access to this kind of pricing.
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