As we did earlier in the year, we had an opportunity to post an article on the ARM Connected Community site, an information-sharing forum for those interested in ARM. Our post, the Effect of HDI and layer count on bare board cost, appeared yesterday.
The article was in response to a questions we’re asked pretty often: how do you cost-out the differences between a single board chip-down solution and a solution that incorporates a SOM. We got some board prices and did our analysis, and were surprised – make that shocked – at the delta between bas board costs for a 12-layer HDI board and those for a 6-layer board that leverages a SOM. We were also interested to learn that board size was pretty much irrelevant.
The post is not particularly ARM-related, so even if you’re not doing ARM developement, you might want to check out the post and see what our analysis found.