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A $1, Linux-Capable, Hand-Solderable Processor (hackaday.com)

Posted by msmash on from the how-about-that dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Over on the EEVblog, someone noticed an interesting chip that's been apparently flying under our radar for a while. This is an ARM processor capable of running Linux. It's hand-solderable in a TQFP package, has a built-in Mali GPU, support for a touch panel, and has support for 512MB of DDR3. If you do it right, this will get you into the territory of a BeagleBone or a Raspberry Pi Zero, on a board that's whatever form factor you can imagine. Here's the best part: you can get this part for $1 USD in large-ish quantities. A cursory glance at the usual online retailers tells me you can get this part in quantity one for under $3. This is interesting, to say the least.

The chip in question, the Allwinner A13, is a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor. While it's not much, it is a chip that can run Linux in a hand-solderable package. There is no HDMI support, you'll need to add some more chips (that are probably in a BGA package), but, hey, it's only a dollar. If you'd like to prototype with this chip, the best options right now are a few boards from Olimex, and a System on Module from the same company. That SoM is an interesting bit of kit, allowing anyone to connect a power supply, load an SD card, and get this chip doing something. Currently, there aren't really any good solutions for a cheap Linux system you can build at home, with hand-solderable chips.

6 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. Waiting for RISC-V by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm waiting for the future of computing: RISC-V.

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  2. Allwinner is garbage by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Allwinner is garbage. This is the shit you get in those chinese Raspberry Pi clones. The support and documentation are essentially nonexistant. If you even have a reference linux image to work with, it will break all of the time and never be updated

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    "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    1. Re:Allwinner is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Likely the broadcom chips in the PIs are unavailable because the chips in all the PIs are EOL. The PI foundation clears out broadcom's remaining stock for pennies on the dollar cranks out PI boards till they run out of chips and then spins up a new PI board using the next EOL part that broadcom has. Win Win for most everyone. Broadcom gets to clear out their EOL stock, PI foundation gets cheap chips, We get cheap SBCs.

      Likely the reason we are stuck with binary blobs for the drivers is because of the licensed audio/video codecs in the chip. You have to pay extra licensing fees to the PI foundation to unlock these codecs. If the drivers were open sourced anyone would be able to unlock these codecs without paying the license fee, likely putting broadcom and the PI foundation in some hot water with the patent owners of said codecs.

    2. Re: Allwinner is garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's a lot of likely guesses. Unsurprisingly you have a few wrong, most clearly illustrated by the ongoing availablity of raspberry pi 1s.

      The fact is Broadcom sucks to work with. They require you to hand over a kidney to get access to a single datasheet, if they feel your kidneys are worth having. I can only guess how hard it is to get actual product.

  3. Re:This only cheap by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I can see if you are making something that you plan to semi-mass-produce say with a custom PCB boards. While cheap, is also very under feature, and soldering for your own little project would just take up more then it would be worth getting full computer on a board like the Raspberry Pi or an Arduino. For a single use project the difference between $1.00, $5.00 or $20.00 isn't that big of a deal. Especially if you are going to manually solder it.

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    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  4. Re:This only cheap by barc0001 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I can't, really. It's $5 for a Pi Zero with tons of support for the platform and a million people doing stuff with that exact size build to draw on for info/experience/inspiration. Someone comes out with the $3.50 SalmonBerry Cake Zero that nobody's seen before with some kitbashed board config, are you really going to try and save $1.50 going with the weirdo board? If it causes you 20 minutes of trouble, then you've already lost compared to just going with the Pi Zero.