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

[Philip Covington]

On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 12:37 PM, Philip Covington
<p.covington at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>

Here's the two packages the OMAP3530 is available in:

<http://www.ti.com/litv/pdf/mpbg733e>  which is 0.4 mm ball spacing

<http://www.ti.com/litv/pdf/mpbg742b> which is 0.65 mm ball spacing

I have not even looked at the other components packages on the Beagle
yet.  Some only come in one package.

73 Phil N8VB

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