This is a weird question, but there are many embedded developers I've spoken to on these forums. So hopefully the right eyes find this.
I'd like to source say, an NXP iMX6Solo, or maybe an AllWinner H616 or some other ARM Cortex A with HDMI and at least 128MB of SRAM
My engineers balk at me if they can't get a regular supply of something years out so they don't want to just commit to say, using a Banana board with an Allwinner chip on it even if we can embed that in our device.
Problem is
A)
I can't source the AllWinner H616 chip itself I found LCSC out of Asia who will source the chips but it's easy to source boards that are based on it.
I feel like there's some sort of secret sauce I'm missing here. How are these people getting these chips to make these boards? They're all over the place, so the H616 must be in production. Where do i buy it?
https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/Microcontroller-Units-MCUs-MPUs-SOCs_span-style-background-color-ff0-Allwinner-span-Tech-H616_C5365289.html[
^]
B) I can't get a regular supply of a particular NXP chip off digikey or mouser year to year, even if NXP's roadmap still has the thing in production into the next decade.
C) There are turnkey embedded solutions out there that have ship commitments through a particular year for various products, but we can't afford the buy in. Our clients won't pay for it, and we can't get them in the form factors we'd need.
How do I solve these problems? Where do I begin?
I never thought my biggest problem with embedded development would be sourcing the flippin parts.
I didn't go to school for this. I have no background in it other than throwing myself into the deep end, so I'm hoping I'm just missing something, and somebody with real experience and education in the arena can throw some tips my way.
Thanks.
What I have tried:
Emailing, web searches, basically a bunch of legwork to get where I'm at now.