[hpsdr] Is the Board going to REALLY be that expensive?

[Philip Covington]

On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 12:16 PM, Steven Wilson <stevew at intrinsix.com> wrote:
> ***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****
>
> In looking at the basic path Pico->Beagle-> (our own) people have been
> parroting the price for the Beagle board bare PCB in low quantities as a
> big price issue.  Uhm - granted that the Beagle board has lots of nice
> features and has a great form factor AND it would be nice to keep it
> smallish - Why is that an absolute requirement?
>
> My point is that the price of the Beagle Board is due to the high tech
> manufacturing for really dense circuits.  What happens if we double the
> form factor of the Beagle Board and don't put as many peripheral
> connections on it?  Does the price of the PCB become manageable?  If we
> spread things out a bit  - can we bring it down to the price of other
> boars in the HPSDR system?
>
> Inquiring minds want to know?
>
> Steve KA6S

I don't think the problem is so much how many connections or how close
together the parts are.  It is the available packages themselves (fine
BGAs) that require the multiple signal layers and blind/partial/micro
vias for example.   Maybe the 0.65 mm packages would be a little
easier to deal with... I don't know...

73 Phil N8VB

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