ARM A9 Adapter board

Once you are accessing the pins what do you mean to do with them - things like DDRAM interfaces won't work with dangly wires !

These people make the sort of thing you want (I haven't checked for details)

Ironwood Electronics Adapter Technologies

or else you can make your own.  You might do better to choose  aprocessor where there is a dev board already available - playing with 624 pin BGAs is not cheap or easy.

MK

Thank you Michael for your valuable reply.........actually what we are planning is to make a microcomputer with ARM A9 as it's brain, so i cannot use a development board. We have to start from the mere processor itself, so i think the only option available for us is to go for adapter board so that the tricky part of soldering is being taken care of.

Again, thanks for the information that we cannot interface DDRAM using mere wires (i am not an expertise in such things), so i think it would be better for me to ask the help of Ironwood Electronics as you recommended.

If you can't handle the soldering of the BGA then keep away from the chip !

There are loads of ways to get an ARM 9 processor into a system without soldering the BGA - look at processor modules or one of the many ready made boards like RaspberryPi, BeagleBone etc.

Which ARM9 part are you looking at and why do you  want make your own board ?

MK

The problem with buying development boards like Pi or BeagleBone is that they are available only with inbuilt USB ports, LAN interfaces etc. We are doing a project on how to build a microcomputer using one of ARM processors, so we are not supposed to buy a microcomputer....but has to make it instead......and we are confused about whether to start from BGA or not. Hope you can help us sir .

What is the spec of the microcomputer - do you have to use an ARM9 ?

Do you need to make your own pcb ?

Here is a slightly more friendly packaged ARM "application" type processor.

https://olimex.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/cortex-a8-in-tqfp-sure-allwinner-a13/

If you could use an ARM Cortex M4 or M7 it would be much easier - but I would need to know the spec you are aiming at for the complete system to advise.

MK

The spec that we are aiming at is a 32 bit microcomputer with 2 GB RAM that can be loaded with an OS such as Linux or Windows. It should have the ability to support various interfacing standards such as USB, LAN, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth . We are also aiming at using this microcomputer for digital image processing which might point to the fact that it should support implementation of Artificial Neuro Network ( Probability < 10% ) and also some amount of Video processing.

As far as i know the issue with choosing the M-series is that their clock frequency is lower ( about 800 MHz ) than A-series ( 1 GHz ) making them not capable of supporting Linux or Windows OS.

Nevertheless to mention we are using a VGA monitor .

M series won't do for Linux.

The AllWinner may be your best bet  - I've seen some home brew projects on the web - worth Googling for them for tips.

Is this a college project ?

MK

M series won't do for Linux.

The AllWinner may be your best bet  - I've seen some home brew projects on the web - worth Googling for them for tips.

Is this a college project ?

MK

Yes sir, we are doing this as our final year B.Tech project.

But i have seen that raspberry pi boards with 1 GB RAM are a bit slow, that is the reason why we are planning to make a microcomputer with at least 2 GB RAM and the Allwinner A10 supports only 1 GB RAM. 

Also if we choose Allwinner A13 then we have to compromise on the fact that it does not support SATA,HDMI or CAN. So we are a bit confused to reach on a final  decision about it.

And one plus point about choosing Cortex A9 is that not many people have tried it.....so it's a new one and unique too !! (barring the risks involved in trying something new).

What pcb design software do you have available for this ?

Have any of you had experience with laying out pcbs for high speed logic and fine pitch BGA ?

MK

No sir, the level of experience that we already  have is as much as designing a PCB housing a micro controller for an embedded system. And for that we have used the software Proteus 8.1 Professional.