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A $1, Linux-Capable, Hand-Solderable Processor (hackaday.com)
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.
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.
A fundamentally new architecture: The Mill
Allwinner is garbage. This is the shit you get in those chinese Raspberry Pi clones.
Uhm, what? They run circles around anything Raspberry Pi can do. Here's for example why rpi open firemware died because Raspberry is utter shit. And just see what the author recommends instead. Allwinner is a cheap-and-cut-corners alternative, but at least it gets shit done. Its support is also mostly non-existant, but the community managed to write free drivers — including beating the ATF into shape, so it's ready, included in Debian and mostly merged upstream (this one lacks a few patches for Pinebook/etc).
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Well, maybe it is if you have $2k+ in SMT soldering equipment like: https://www.weller-tools.com/p... and a reasonable quality microscope: https://www.microscope.com/oma...
A TQFP chip usually has pins on 0.8mm centres or less (down to 0.4mm). In case you don't know what this means, this chip will have 32 to 64 pins per inch that need soldering.
In any case, you need to have a PCB of appropriate quality to solder it on and, if you aren't experienced in working with them, you'll fuck up a lot of PCBs and chips. These chips are meant to be soldered on an appropriately solder pasted PCB and then run through an oven. Single pins can be reworked with the tools noted above or with custom hot gas tools.
I'm sure shortly somebody with the appropriate knowledge, skills and resources will design a Single Board Computer (SBC) around this chip with an appropriate BIOS chip or tools to flash it. If they don't come up with the SBC, then there is a reason why they didn't (or stopped before offering a product) and you will avoid going down a rabbit hole.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Clearly YES: after 8 years of efforts, the mainline Linux kernel support is absolutely better for Allwinner chips. See by yourself: http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort
I have do many projects with Allwinner H2+ or H3 processors. There are supported by mainline Linux kernel, free of binary blob, powerful, reliable, cheap, an AVAILABLE to purchase directly from Allwinner. Seriously, most clients have done a demo of there future product idea with a Raspberry PI, but there is no way to design a product with a Broadcom CPU since this chip is _NOT_ AVAILABLE to purchase. And the H2+ or H3 processors I have worked with don't suck at all compared to many others ARM processors, especially the peripherals are reliable and well supported. Try a ~10$ Orange PI One with Armbian before spreading emotional conclusion.