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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.

51 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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    Support my political activism on Patreon.
  2. This only cheap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Unless you want to do it yourself or you have a project that needs it. 5 dollar will get you a Raspberry Pi Zero with a full system minus storage.

    1. 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.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    2. Re:This only cheap by Walter+White · · Score: 2

      $5US for a Pi Zero W at my local Micro Center. But I can only buy one at that price. $15 for 2-5. $20 for 6+.
      It's really hard to beat the price/performance of the various Pi boards.

    3. 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.

    4. Re:This only cheap by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      It's useful for commercial projects. Even for companies BGA soldering is an issue. You can't just throw a BGA part in without looking at the soldering profiles of everything else on the board, and manufacturing costs more in any case.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    5. Re:This only cheap by Walter+White · · Score: 1

      $16 at ebay (with 512GB RAM) And no HDMI.
      No.

  3. 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

    --

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

      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.
    2. Re:Allwinner is garbage by lastman71 · · Score: 1

      False. It has full support in mainline kernel, and work just fine. And it's two time faster of a rasberry pi 1 (or zero) anyway..

      It's true that allwinner doesn't care to much for "not" android market, but linux-sunxi community has developed a very good support in linux.

       

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

      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.

    4. Re: Allwinner is garbage by John+Allsup · · Score: 1

      Last time I tried All winner, the Linux ran badly, built in WiFi did not work, and basically I had to consign them to the bin. For the saving over a pi, All winner is not worth the hassle.

      --
      John_Chalisque
    5. 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.

    6. Re: Allwinner is garbage by lastman71 · · Score: 1

      Probably you did something wrong. I'm still using a olinuxino-micro-a20 as a home server, and it works fine. 100% supported by the debian installer.

      Also the a13 cpu has full support in mainline linux and mainline u-boot, without binary blob. The same is impossible with raspberry pi. For me is a thing...

    7. Re:Allwinner is garbage by morethanapapercert · · Score: 2

      To be fair though, Raspberry Pi was never intended to be a great system, just good enough for many hobbyist projects. Its focus is as an educational platform and it has been very successful at that. I can think of about a half dozen projects I would like to make with a Pi if I ever had the time (and to be honest, space for a workbench). Hearing about this new chip, I've already come up with two things on my idea list I could do with this chip instead of the Pi. My main concern for those two projects would be whether there is a big enough ecosystem for it. Raspberry Pi has an excellent ecosystem of add-ons, user forums and tutorials to hold my hand.

      --
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    8. 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.

    9. Re:Allwinner is garbage by Gabest · · Score: 1

      The support and documentation are essentially nonexistant.

      I think that's actually a language barrier. Do you speak Chinese?

    10. Re:Allwinner is garbage by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Allwinner have a much better attitude towards open source support than Broadcom (the Raspberry Pi CPU manufacturer). They have been opening up more and more hardware documentation.

      The main issue seems to be that they are a Chinese company which makes it harder for westerners to interact with them, but they are getting better.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  4. About that hand computer... by The+Original+CDR · · Score: 3, Funny

    Shouldn't a chip for your hand be implanted? Soldering a chip to your hand sounds painful.

  5. Can you imagine... by ArhcAngel · · Score: 5, Funny

    a Beowulf cluster of these?

    --
    "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
    1. Re:Can you imagine... by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      The 1980's called, they want their expression back.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    2. Re:Can you imagine... by Crashmarik · · Score: 1

      The 1970s called they want casual sex back everyone agreed.

    3. Re:Can you imagine... by LordHighExecutioner · · Score: 1

      You must be new here, it is much better to imagine Natalie Portman covered with hot grits!

  6. Or is it Mill Computing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    A fundamentally new architecture: The Mill

    1. Re:Or is it Mill Computing? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 2

      Mill computing? It only runs g-code?

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    2. Re:Or is it Mill Computing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's patented, no thanks.

    3. Re:Or is it Mill Computing? by WorBlux · · Score: 1

      No, Out of the Box Computing wants to be a chip manufacturer, and the fallback is the be an IP house like ARM. And the design is as a family, so I don't think it would be hard to find a chip to run a tablet or phone with a secure micro-kernel. And yes that is the great befifit of the chip, and they make function calls about as cheap as any architecture while providing a secure hardware-managed stack.

  7. This Chip is NOT Hand Solderable by mykepredko · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:This Chip is NOT Hand Solderable by qvatch · · Score: 1

      I hand soldered a QFN package with 0.5mm pin pitch last month with a 10x hand lens and a hakko-888 iron with the chisel tip. I don't do a lot of soldering. Yes it was tricky and it took quite a while to convince myself I'd gotten good connections and no bridges, but it worked the first time. With drag soldering, plentiful flux, and maybe some solder wick it is within grasp of anyone that cares to try. PCB was one of those 10 for $2 style chinese manufacture.

    2. Re:This Chip is NOT Hand Solderable by Pascoea · · Score: 2

      I've hand-soldered quite a few packages with similar pitch. Granted, you're not going to do it on a plain protoboard with a $15 hardware store soldering iron with a naked eye. But a decent iron with the appropriate tip (I run an old school metcal with an sttc-140 tip), some liquid flux, solder wick, and an eye loupe it can be done. Get two corners tacked, drag solder the pins (don't worry about bridging yet), apply some flux, and use the wick to clean it up. It won't look like it was solder pasted, but it'll get the job done.

      I spent a few years in a prototype lab. The most "fun" one I got to do was assembling essentially a PC motherboard from scratch. We had the rework team from the production side place the BGAs, but us lab-lackeys got to do the rest.

      That being said... I would tend to agree with you, this isn't a hobbyist chip by any stretch. You'd need, at a minimum, a breakout board for it. (And some super steady hands) Not to mention all of the ancillary devices/ports/etc that you'd need just to use it.

    3. Re:This Chip is NOT Hand Solderable by stooo · · Score: 1

      >> 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.

      No problemo, even 0.4mm. Use drag soldering techniques with a lot of flux, and a concave tip.
      https://www.youtube.com/result...

      --
      aaaaaaa
    4. Re:This Chip is NOT Hand Solderable by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      TQFPs can be hand soldered with normal soldering equipment. The trick is not to even try to solder the individual pins one at a time. That way lies madness.

      Put down the chip on the footprint, line it up and put a blob of solder on one corner, then check it is still lined up, if not re-heat the blob and carefully push the chip into position. Now solder the rest of the chip, don't worry about shorts at this stage, just make sure there is solder joining the pins to the pads. Often it's easiest to drag a blob down the side of the chip (some people can get a blob to neatly solder all the pins as it passes by, but that is a lot harder than the youtube videos make it look)

      Finally come in with the solder wick and clean up the shorts.

      Some people like to use magnification, personally I have found it more of a hinderance than a help when hand soldering.

      What *does* matter a lot is the PCB finish, if the PCB has a crappy finish that doesn't solder well then you will have problems with open circuits. It's also helpful to use a footprint with slightly longer pads when desiging a board for hand soldering.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    5. Re:This Chip is NOT Hand Solderable by JamesNorton · · Score: 1

      Yep, drag soldering is the technique you'd use to "hand solder" such a part. With drag soldering and a "hoof" type iron tip you aren't soldering individual pins. https://www.youtube.com/result...

    6. Re:This Chip is NOT Hand Solderable by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      Solder paste and a toaster oven. I'm amazed at what some people can do at home without spending a lot of money.

    7. Re:This Chip is NOT Hand Solderable by adolf · · Score: 2

      So it's a $1 chip that needs a $1 breakout board.

      Or: Custom PCBs aren't difficult or expensive anymore, ranging from Osh Park to Dirty PCBs. There's *lots* of options, even if the only goal is to break out the interesting interfaces and put them on 0.1" headers so you can breadboard easily with the things.

      (And more to the point: It only takes one person to design such a PCB, and then everyone else can benefit from that design.)

      --
      Kid-proof tablet..
    8. Re:This Chip is NOT Hand Solderable by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      I've soldered a lot of 0.5mm pitch TQFP chips by hand with just a decent soldering iron (Hakko, but cheaper ones can be used) and a concave tip using the drag soldering method.

      I start by tacking down two opposing corner pins to give a bit of mechanical stability and ensure that the part is placed properly. Then apply flex all along one side (I like the pasty stuff that liquifies when heated) and apply solder to the iron. Then just drag from one end to the other, touching each pin and letting the flux do its work.

      Do that for all four sides and then inspect for bad joints. With a little practice you can usually get everything perfect first time. A chip like this takes maybe 5 minutes to do this way, less for smaller parts.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    9. Re:This Chip is NOT Hand Solderable by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Oh, and I should add that I solder these mostly on to low cost PCBs manufactured in China for $0.50 each. HASL finish, 6mil min spacing.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    10. Re:This Chip is NOT Hand Solderable by Ozoner · · Score: 1

      > This Chip is NOT Hand Solderable

      ROFL. You must be a software person.

      Me, I routinely hand solder TQFP chips.
      And I'm in my late 70's with eyesight problems..

    11. Re:This Chip is NOT Hand Solderable by strikethree · · Score: 1

      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 good quality soldering iron, some solder flux, and some skill is all you need to hand solder packages like these. I have hand soldered packages such as the PowerPC 601 perfectly. For reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      The trick is to place the part appropriately, use generous amounts of flux, and move the soldering iron and solder at a consistent pace. The solder is essentially attracted to the legs of the package and the consistent motion ensures that not too much solder ends up on any single leg. It should look as perfect as a machine placed device.

      A long long time ago in a land far far away, I used to work in the manufacture of some of Apple's PCs. Needless to say, not everything that went through a machine came out perfectly and there were ample opportunities to hand solder.

      --
      "Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
  8. There are other TQFP packages by mnmn · · Score: 1

    The at91sam9260 is available in TQFP, albeit more like $9 in quantity

    There are other QFP/TQFP packages from cypress and (I think) TI that are hand-solderable.

    Using flash and DRAM compatible with these chips you can have a sufficiently usable board with nothing BGA on it.

    Just look at the Olimex older designs for these chips. And the documentation and reference Linux implementation are nicer than Allwinner.

    The only newsworthy item here is the $1 part, but I thought the Rock-something MIPS chip with stacked ram is similar. Correct me if I'm wrong.

    --
    "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
  9. It is easily Hand Solderable by Maddog+Batty · · Score: 4, Informative

    Have a look at some youtube videos of hand soldering TQFP, there are loads.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... for example

    I'm happy hand soldering 0.65mm devices and I have done 0.5mm. It is easy enough to do if you are careful however my preferred method is to get a £30 stencil and use solder paste together with hand placement. I then chuck it in my £30 oven and get results good enough that my customers assume that it has been made on a pick and place machine.

    Yes it takes a bit of practise and experience but certainly no expensive equipment.

    --
    wot no sig
  10. Uh, Why? by geekmux · · Score: 1

    "Currently, there aren't really any good solutions for a cheap Linux system you can build at home, with hand-solderable chips."

    Gee, I can't imagine why...I mean, in a world of $1500 iPhones, who the hell can afford a $35 Raspberry Pi, amirite?

    Guess it's best to go cheap(er), and re-invent the wheel. Or at least make a half-assed version of a wheel and pretend that there are millions of Linux DIY fans who just can't wait to hand-solder their computers together (as if "hand-solderable" here implies $50 worth of cheap tools)...

    1. Re:Uh, Why? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

      Uh, Why?

      I can't imagine why anyone would ever wany enything custom ever. We should just consume poducts.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    2. Re:Uh, Why? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

      In this case, a "custom" solution requires thousands of dollars of equipment to take a "one-dollar" chip and attach it properly to a board to do something with it.

      You really don't need that much though. You can buy a servicable reflow oven for about... (checks) huh they've gone up in price. About $200 for a T962. They're not great but I've got one and they work well enough. (https://www.ebay.co.uk/bhp/reflow-oven)

      You can get a servicable iron and hot air gun for rather cheaper than they used to be (an 852D+ model https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.h...). I've got one and it does the job well. You can skip the reflow oven and use the hot air if you're so inclined. I've never done a whole board like that but obviously rework is a thing and I have replaced chips successfully.

      Boards you can get cheaply. Like Hackvana and OSHPark.

      This guy will do you stencils probably cheaper than your board house:

      https://www.smtstencil.co.uk/s...

      I've used them and they work very well. I usually splash out the extra and get a stainless steel one though, which for small boards is a little over 2x the cost. Hackvana provides silver-steel tooling pins with the stencils, but you can get them very cheaply. Pins, tooling holes, a chunk of thick MDF and a 4mm drill and I can place the stencils fine enough.

      Oh and you need a good supply of acetone for cleaning off the solder paste for when you foul up the screen printing which always happens when I'm out of practice.

      You then probably want a good pair of tweesers and a vacuum pickup tool. Both are can be had inexpensively.

      With a setup like that I can and have done boards with a mix of chips, down to 0.5mm pitch LGA chips and similar QFN chips, not to mention the scattering of 0402s all around.

      You're also mistaken about board assembly houses. I engaged one when I wanted to make 50 of the boards (they were small ones), but I did that when the design was finalised and I wanted to make some prototypes of the full product. The earlier boards soldered myself. The lead time shorter and I could do one at a time. Solder one up eith the full design. Test it, solder up a second slightly differently and put some blue wires in etc.

      The total cost of the soldering kit was a few hundred dollars, not a few thousand.

      I've seen people do quite amazing jobs with the blob and wipe technique for leaded chips so you could skip the reflow oven too. I've also watched people hand solder QFNs in my local hackspace with a very fine conical tip, using the little bits up the edge of the case. I've never got into those technique because I needed reflow for the LGAs and honestly it seems less fiddly.

      I have however deadbugged 0.5mm pitch QFNs and attached to DIP sockets for very early stage prototyping. I can see a cool QFN only chip on my vendor's website, order it, dead bug it when it arrives the next day and try it out in a breadboard.

      I'm not in the electronics game professinally at the moment, I did all that when I was, on the cheap at a very lean startup. Got the product to market, too.

      I've never worked with a single chip that big, personally, but you're mistaken that it's out of reach of the hobbyist. You can have a setup capable of dealing with a chip like that for under a hundred dollars if you're very careful.

      But this is all a bit of s silly discussion. Few people will go for a bare chip like that apropos nothing. Most people will be fairly serious hobbyists because it's quite intimidating. They've most likely got the kit already.

      And the market has countless options out there for a DIY Linux box (beaglebone, Pi, etc.) and has for years, so DIY fans aren't exactly short on options.

      Those are great and I can't see any use of these $1 hand solderable chips for anything I'm currently working on. But you greatly underestimate the ability of hobbyists and overestimate greatly the costs involved.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  11. Re:I want to say don't bother by Tsolias · · Score: 1

    "We have passed the threshold."

    we have to wait for intel.

  12. Re:Linux? Linux is dead... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    What should we use instead?

  13. Could have fooled me by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

    Isn't soldering CPUs evil?

    --
    Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  14. hand solderable ... by epine · · Score: 1

    Here's the best part: you can get this part for $1 USD in large-ish quantities.

    How many people out there have ever actually soldered one of these?

    It's a 20 mm Ã-- 20 mm eLQFP176 with a 55 nm pin spacing, er, lithography.

  15. Where's my pi 4? by Snotnose · · Score: 1

    pi 3B+ is what, 3 years old? I'm learning what my Plex can and can't play, if I had 2x the CPU I could play everything without "the server hasn't the oomph to transcode this video" errors.

    1. Re:Where's my pi 4? by Snotnose · · Score: 1

      I was not aware of that, I'd been under the impression my pi was a few years old.

      Guess I need to start transcoding those videos the pi can't do.

  16. Wireless controller by LordWabbit2 · · Score: 1

    I didn't actually read the article, but I hope they also have a cordless controller, didn't count the amount of times someone tripped over the damn cord and shit went flying across the room, but it was a LOT.

    --
    There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.