Purchasing AllWinner chips

[Andre Renaud]

Hi,
Does anyone know of a reliable supplier who sells the AllWinner A20
chips? I was hoping to find them on digikey, mouser or avnet, but it
appears that they're a little bit hard to find. I see that Olimex will
sell them in low volumes, but I was hoping for a better known supplier
(and higher quantities).

I know this is a Linux forum, but I'm not 100% sure who to ask, so I
was hoping someone here might have already looked into this.

Regards,
Andre

[jons...@gmail.com]

On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 3:09 PM, Andre Renaud <an...@bluewatersys.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> Does anyone know of a reliable supplier who sells the AllWinner A20
> chips? I was hoping to find them on digikey, mouser or avnet, but it
> appears that they're a little bit hard to find. I see that Olimex will
> sell them in low volumes, but I was hoping for a better known supplier
> (and higher quantities).

Allwinner is talking with the big distributors currently but AFAIK no
deal has been reached yet.

Many people have designed their own board locally using a few chips
from Olimex. Then when you want to make a larger quantity have them
assembled in Shenzhen. The Allwinner chips are plentiful in Shenzhen.

Instead of buying chips you might want to consider standard Q88 tablet
PCBAs. A20 tablet PCBAs can be bought in the $20-30 range in Shenzhen.
An easy way to get a hold of them is to buy Q88 tablets and
disassemble them. These PCBA are made by many companies and the price
is highly competitive. It is also possible to buy STB PCBAs.

Another option is to have a Chinese design house make one for you. For
about $5000 they will design whatever you want and provide about ten
prototype boards. These designs are easy to put into production since
they will use local components. Around $40/board for medium volume but
this depends on what you put on the board.

Reusing Q88 PCBAs is by far the easiest solution. You can mount one in
a case and then use an internal USB cable to talk to your specialized
hardware if needed.

>
> I know this is a Linux forum, but I'm not 100% sure who to ask, so I
> was hoping someone here might have already looked into this.
>
> Regards,
> Andre
>

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--
Jon Smirl
jons...@gmail.com

[Luc Verhaegen]

Isn't Q88 an A13 based board?

Luc Verhaegen.

[jons...@gmail.com]

Q88 is just the design dimensions. Most Q88 format boards are A13 but
some are A10, A20 and A23.


>
> Luc Verhaegen.

[Luc Verhaegen]

Oh, i see, this is new info to me.

Maybe this should be documented on our wiki, as we have plenty of Q88
lookalike devices in at least our A13 tablets.

Luc Verhaegen.

[jons...@gmail.com]

There are some other standard formats. One is a thick L shaped, and
other is L-shaped with a thin neck. They have Qxx names too but I
don't know what they are.

There is one group of companies making PCBAs in these standard
formats. The location of the LCD/CSI/etc connectors are also
standardized. Another group assembles tablets designed around these
standard PBCAs. This model lets the PBCA vendors sell to multiple
customers and the assembler to have multiple suppliers. I don't think
there are any written specs for this, it just seems to have evolved
that way.

Of course nothing stops you from doing complete custom either.

>
> Maybe this should be documented on our wiki, as we have plenty of Q88
> lookalike devices in at least our A13 tablets.
>
> Luc Verhaegen.
>