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From: H. Peter Anvin<hpa@z...>
Date: Tue Dec 16 01:07:50 CET 2003
Subject: [oc] Prototyping BGA devices
Colin F. MacKenzie wrote:
>
>
> Hi all, Sorry if this is not exactly about open cores, but I think you
> people can answer my question the best. I was wondering what tools any
> of you who have worked with BGA packaged devices (namely FPGA) have used
> in prototyping your design. I don’t have, nor can I really justify to my
> superiors, a rework station. Is there a cheap & dirty method to working
> with BGA such as using solder paste or BGA socket adapters? I will be
> working with a Fine Pitch (1mm) Thin BGA FT256 FPGA.
>

You're better off sending your stuff to a third-party assembly house.
There are plenty of them, and it's usually not very expensive.

There *are* BGA sockets, they are, however, very expensive (depending on
size as much as thousands of dollars) and take a lot of board real
estate (as much as a very large heatsink.) My employer, Transmeta, uses
them to be able to quickly test multiple chips in the same board.

-hpa