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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.
I'm waiting for the future of computing: RISC-V.
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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.
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
Shouldn't a chip for your hand be implanted? Soldering a chip to your hand sounds painful.
a Beowulf cluster of these?
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
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.
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Mill computing? It only runs g-code?
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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
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.
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.