[News] Amigaone has the Mentor ARC ARTICIA S chipset: is it a TERON CX board ? | ANN.lu |
Posted on 27-Feb-2002 15:17 GMT by Christophe Decanini | 76 comments View flat View list |
If you look at the pitures of the AmigaOne you can see the brand/model of the NorthBridge.
Here is a link that give you more information about it.
I like particularly this article that says Pentium 3, Pentium 4 performance at half the price.
The Amigaone look to be exactely a Teron CX.
Lets just hope that YOU guys order enough AmigaOne to get lower and lower prices.
I guess Bplan used the Articia S to build the Pegasos.
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Amigaone has the Mentor ARC ARTICIA S chipset: is it a TERON CX board ? : Comment 44 of 76 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Amifan on 27-Feb-2002 19:59 GMT | Well...it's based around that mai board for sure...you can see that youself because of all the little details like the silkscreen surrounding BGA socket (at least where it has to go) and other components (every compagnies makes their own footprints).
The location and shape of the ground planes and several other planes.
Furthermore do some people underestimate the price of the actual PCB. Those things of these sizes (and number of layers, trace width (probably 0.15um), spacing (also 0.15um) are damn expensive in a relative low amount because of the complexity (high error rate) and size.
Don't forget to add the cost of manufacturing it: Making new tooling like a pastmask screen (seems like a new revision), making a program for the pick and place machine, Hand-placement of wire components before they go thru the wavesolder line.....
All those little components like resistors (an averageSMD 0805 resistor still costs about 0.0025 EURO) transistors (0.05EURO) diodes (0.02 EURO) etc... then add the price of the northbridge, southbridge, sockets etc and you'll end up with these kind of prices...
I think that this is a more then fair price.
We should worry about the BGA socket....whoever worked with those ones knows two things:
a) A quality one is extremely expensive (I'm talking about 450-500 EURO), much cheaper versions (50-100 EURO are available, but then you'll face problem b)
b) Keeping all balls contacted (they're nothing more then a bubble of solder) over a longer period of time or when you exchange them a lot needs at least 100g of pressure on each ball. This means a total of more then 25 kg pressure.
We use a 500 EURO BGA socket with a screw lock to accomplish that pressure, otherwise you can bet on it that your CPU will start to fail after a couple of months (OK we exchange the ASIC a lot).
So my advice would be to spend the additional money of a socket on a faster G3 (733Mhz or something).
I'm also curious what faster CPU you should put into the 256 pin BGA socket since even the IBM 750FX (the one that is supposed to reach 1 GHz) uses a 292 pin BGA housing, not to mention the 360 pins BGA of a G4.
Another option would be to use a ZIF socket instead and produce "PGA" print with a PPC solder on it to fit into the ZIF. You can't buy a G3/G4 anywhere anyway..... |
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