Neo Freerunner manufacturing status

[Michael Shiloh]

Hi Ian,

Since I'm in California and the factory is in China, it's a little 
difficult for me to know exactly what the plan is and where there are 
concerns and weaknesses.

As far as I can tell there is some concern that the yield initially may 
not be as high as we would like, and that some tweaking will be 
necessary. Until we manufacture a trial run, we won't know whether 
tweaking will be necessary or how extensive this tweaking needs to be.

So, sadly, I don't know how long PVT will take and have no timeline.

Perhaps those of you with more mass-production manufacturing experience 
can speak from your experiences.

Michael

ian douglas wrote:
> Hi Michael (and Steve),
> 
> I'm surprised nobody has asked yet:
> 
> I know Michael himself has admitted that Openmoko has been historically 
> bad at estimating delivery dates, but is there *any* chance on getting 
> an updated timeline now that we have this news about the A5/A6?
> 
> IE: How long can we (reasonably) expect the design update from A5 to A6 
> expect to take? Will the PVT take a week? Two weeks? How long will final 
> production take to ramp up and start seeing units make their way to 
> shipping departments?
> 
> Ian
> 
> Michael Shiloh wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> I just received a status report from our VP of Marketing, Steve Mosher:
>>
>>
>> The Freerunner design is currently staged to go through Production
>> Validation Test (PVT). The hardware design A5 is, we believe, solid. 
>> We are updating this design to A6 to maximize production yields.
>>
>> The purpose of PVT is to make sure the yield is high enough, and to 
>> make sure the manufacturing and testing process is smooth and efficient.
>>
>> Steve also welcomes direct contact from you. He can be reached at 
>> steve at openmoko.com.