...

[cleaningOut]

...

[ebclr]

He accept offers also

[technix]

Seems so. Those are "leftover stock" carrying a 1309 date code, so it is likely that those chips are long past their expiry date and are forced to write off.

If you have the right tools for the BGA you can buy some, bake them, and build a DIY experimental board from them. You will need at least some DRAM for it though.

[technix]

So they're almost four years old... wow. I wonder where this guy got them.

The original company that bought those chips probably dumped them as they wrote them off as expired. Whoever received the dump decided to treat them as NOS and resell them.

This is the same reason why there was a time when Xeon E5-2670 and E5-2680 processors was dirt cheap - Facebook and Amazon decommissioned datacenters worth of servers and dumped them to e-waste processors. The e-waste processors treated the processors and memory sticks that are standard products as perfectly resalable second hand and dumped them to the second hand market, causing the street price of the chips to plummet. I grabbed two of them at the cost of 1/3 of a single E5-2620v2 that was used in the same server.

[andyturk]

How would you go about baking these?

[KE5FX]

build a DIY experimental board from them.

Easier said than done... these are 0.8mm pitch BGAs! Any boards you build to use these are going to be wildly expensive in low quantities.

Meh.

[technix]

It's just 0.8mm BGA, not that hard. 0.5mm is like a bitch, and 0.4mm is much harder.

For 0.8mm, you can still use dog bone fanout.

Sure, but going from 4 to 6 layers quadruples the price of the PCB. Any fabs you recommend?

I don't know if Zynq requires 32-bit DDRIII, but I've done 16-bit DDRIII for iMX6ULL, and that's doable with 4-layer, 0.2mm drill and 0.1mm track process without any advanced tech such as blind/buried vias, HDI and so on.
Top: trace
M1: GND/PWR
M2: GND
Bot: trace

It can do 8-, 16-, 18- and 32-bit DDR3. (18-bit DDR3 is 16-bit DDR3 with ECC.)

[eeviking]

Hi guys. I am the ebay seller of the Zynqs.
As technix have correctly guessed they are legit and were rescued from going to the dump due to expired shelf life.
If you want me to change the description I will be happy to do that.
They are MSL3 and should be baked before reflow. (The standard says 9h at 125C, 33h at 90C or 13days at 40C <5%RH)
I will try to ship air tight with silica gel, but I do not have access to vacuum pack.

If anyone have a simple open source board layout for them it would be nice ?

[Sal Ammoniac]

The original company that bought those chips probably dumped them as they wrote them off as expired. Whoever received the dump decided to treat them as NOS and resell them.

Expired? How the hell do chips "expire"?

[tszaboo]

How many do you have? If it is in the 100s it might be even worth to design something for it. Like couple it with DDR and some flash, route the rest to castellations. Selling that many otherwise might be hard.

[technix]

The original company that bought those chips probably dumped them as they wrote them off as expired. Whoever received the dump decided to treat them as NOS and resell them.

Expired? How the hell do chips "expire"?

Unsoldered chips have an expiry date after which the pins may become too oxidized to solder using normal thermal profile, flux and solder paste. Either the chips have to be reballed/reworked or new chips have to be bought. Most company would not bother hiring someone to rework the chips, so they write them off as expired and buy new chips.

For us tinkerers the reballing is a price to pay for buying the chips on the cheap, but with an hour or two of our work we can make use of a super expensive chip without actually paying a lot of the money.

[technix]

How many do you have? If it is in the 100s it might be even worth to design something for it. Like couple it with DDR and some flash, route the rest to castellations. Selling that many otherwise might be hard.

I would definitely like to buy a few of that. Oh you also need to put the PMIC on the module too.

Also you may want to provide an evaluation board for the castellated module so people can get one and start playing with it. For such modules the Raspberry Pi pinout may be a good idea.

[NorthGuy]

If anyone have a simple open source board layout for them it would be nice ?

It's about $500, if not more, to print a minimum amount of 6-layer ENIG boards with 4mil traces (5mil might be Ok though) and 8mil drills. This will kill all the savings from buying your chips.

[technix]

Hi guys. I am the ebay seller of the Zynqs.
As technix have correctly guessed they are legit and were rescued from going to the dump due to expired shelf life.
If you want me to change the description I will be happy to do that.
They are MSL3 and should be baked before reflow. (The standard says 9h at 125C, 33h at 90C or 13days at 40C <5%RH)
I will try to ship air tight with silica gel, but I do not have access to vacuum pack.

For now store them in a dry hot room with bags of rice surrounding them. The rice grains are very hydrophilic and can pull the moisture out of the chips.

If anyone have a simple open source board layout for them it would be nice ?

Is there anything else you have rescued from the dumpster? I do like to stock up some FPGA in QFP packages. (hand soldering does not mind the moisture level, and I can use some sand paper to quickly dispatch the corrosion.)

[eeviking]

How many do you have? If it is in the 100s it might be even worth to design something for it. Like couple it with DDR and some flash, route the rest to castellations. Selling that many otherwise might be hard.

I only have about 50 left.

[eeviking]

The original company that bought those chips probably dumped them as they wrote them off as expired. Whoever received the dump decided to treat them as NOS and resell them.

Expired? How the hell do chips "expire"?

Unsoldered chips have an expiry date after which the pins may become too oxidized to solder using normal thermal profile, flux and solder paste. Either the chips have to be reballed/reworked or new chips have to be bought. Most company would not bother hiring someone to rework the chips, so they write them off as expired and buy new chips.

For us tinkerers the reballing is a price to pay for buying the chips on the cheap, but with an hour or two of our work we can make use of a super expensive chip without actually paying a lot of the money.

I don't think the solderability will be a problem, they have been stored at <5%RH
The expiration date is set to ensure 100% yield witch is important if you produce stuff like offshore electronics and you don't want to take any risks. For hobby/prototype use it's not a problem.
They are stored in sealed bag with silica gel packs. I think they are better than rice 

[technix]

The original company that bought those chips probably dumped them as they wrote them off as expired. Whoever received the dump decided to treat them as NOS and resell them.

Expired? How the hell do chips "expire"?

Unsoldered chips have an expiry date after which the pins may become too oxidized to solder using normal thermal profile, flux and solder paste. Either the chips have to be reballed/reworked or new chips have to be bought. Most company would not bother hiring someone to rework the chips, so they write them off as expired and buy new chips.

For us tinkerers the reballing is a price to pay for buying the chips on the cheap, but with an hour or two of our work we can make use of a super expensive chip without actually paying a lot of the money.

I don't think the solderability will be a problem, they have been stored at <5%RH
The expiration date is set to ensure 100% yield witch is important if you produce stuff like offshore electronics and you don't want to take any risks. For hobby/prototype use it's not a problem.
They are stored in sealed bag with silica gel packs. I think they are better than rice 

It is the oxygen in the air that killed the solderability, not the humidity.

Big bags of rice would work much better than a small packet of silica gel.

[eeviking]

The original company that bought those chips probably dumped them as they wrote them off as expired. Whoever received the dump decided to treat them as NOS and resell them.

Expired? How the hell do chips "expire"?

Unsoldered chips have an expiry date after which the pins may become too oxidized to solder using normal thermal profile, flux and solder paste. Either the chips have to be reballed/reworked or new chips have to be bought. Most company would not bother hiring someone to rework the chips, so they write them off as expired and buy new chips.

For us tinkerers the reballing is a price to pay for buying the chips on the cheap, but with an hour or two of our work we can make use of a super expensive chip without actually paying a lot of the money.

I don't think the solderability will be a problem, they have been stored at <5%RH
The expiration date is set to ensure 100% yield witch is important if you produce stuff like offshore electronics and you don't want to take any risks. For hobby/prototype use it's not a problem.
They are stored in sealed bag with silica gel packs. I think they are better than rice 

It is the oxygen in the air that killed the solderability, not the humidity.

Big bags of rice would work much better than a small packet of silica gel.

Yes, but high temperature and humidity will accelerate the oxidation.

I use big bags 

[technix]

The original company that bought those chips probably dumped them as they wrote them off as expired. Whoever received the dump decided to treat them as NOS and resell them.

Expired? How the hell do chips "expire"?

Unsoldered chips have an expiry date after which the pins may become too oxidized to solder using normal thermal profile, flux and solder paste. Either the chips have to be reballed/reworked or new chips have to be bought. Most company would not bother hiring someone to rework the chips, so they write them off as expired and buy new chips.

For us tinkerers the reballing is a price to pay for buying the chips on the cheap, but with an hour or two of our work we can make use of a super expensive chip without actually paying a lot of the money.

I don't think the solderability will be a problem, they have been stored at <5%RH
The expiration date is set to ensure 100% yield witch is important if you produce stuff like offshore electronics and you don't want to take any risks. For hobby/prototype use it's not a problem.
They are stored in sealed bag with silica gel packs. I think they are better than rice 

It is the oxygen in the air that killed the solderability, not the humidity.

Big bags of rice would work much better than a small packet of silica gel.

Yes, but high temperature and humidity will accelerate the oxidation.

I use big bags 

Even in cool dry air the oxidation will ha;pen, albeit much slower. But those chips have been sitting on a shelf for more than 4 years...

Have you rescued other chips from the dumpster?

[KE5FX]

Even in cool dry air the oxidation will ha;pen, albeit much slower. But those chips have been sitting on a shelf for more than 4 years...

This kind of thing matters in ISO-compliant processes where procedures must be documented in detail and perfectly reproducible, where the difference between five-sigma quality and six-sigma matters.  Or if you're sending hardware to the Kuiper Belt.  For every other application, from prototyping to limited production runs, they'll be OK.

[Koen]

AllPCB have a special on leaded HASL 6-layers at 70 USD for 10 boards of 100x100.

[NorthGuy]

AllPCB have a special on leaded HASL 6-layers at 70 USD for 10 boards of 100x100.

You cannot really fan it out with 6mil wires and 12mil holes. They don't publish a separate "hole to copper" specs, but assuming it's the same as with annular ring: 12mil hole + 2*6mil annular ring + 2*6mil gaps + 6mil trace = 42mil, but the distance between ball centers is only 31 mil. So you only will be able to do the outer row of balls (perhaps the second row if you undersize ball pads). I don't think HASL would work neither.

[eeviking]

Did anyone get boards made with these?
Any problems with solderability?

I still have some left I plan to dump for a good price in the buy/sell section.

[asmi]

I've been thinking about designing a board for this SoC. Recently I found a fab that quoted me $234 for 10 6-layer boards with 0.1/0.1 mm traces and 0.2 mm drills and CI (and that price includes DHL delivery to my door), but I would like to see them deliver before I can formulate my opinion. If these parts would still be available at the time, I will definitely buy several - don't mind baking them at all.

[Tomorokoshi]

Or if you're sending hardware to the Kuiper Belt.

Now that sounds like an interesting kickstarter campaign!