A10 Cortex-A8 chip is the heart of A10-OLinuXino-LIME EUR 30 Linux Open Source Hardware computer. Allwinner start the production of A10 back in 2012 and at the end of 2014 decided to stop it’s production as none of the mass volume producers like tablet or Android IPTV dongle manufacturers wanted to continue to manufacture with it.
For our type of business though – embedded applications it’s not good to change your design every couple of years, so we asked Allwinner if there is minium quantity of A10 which they will be able to run custom production for us and they said 50 000 pcs. We placed our order in December 2014 and they shipped to us on 30 of March as we agreed. Now we have enough stock to keep producing A10-OLinuXino-LIME for a while, and if the stock is over we can make new order to Allwinner, this way we can keep the A10-OLinuXino-LIME production as long as there is demand for it.
As you can see these chips are fresh and left the factory 20/03/2015 🙂
olimex 
Apr 07, 2015 @ 14:43:26
Wow! Great picture! So many clients! 🙂 Is it the same for A20?
Apr 07, 2015 @ 21:51:42
I think they still produce A20 actively, but Olimex would know better 🙂
Apr 08, 2015 @ 10:28:50
sure A13 and A20 are selling very well!
Apr 07, 2015 @ 15:07:06
What is the shelf life of those components left in original unopened bag ?
Apr 07, 2015 @ 16:07:02
I hope at least 6-9 months 🙂
Apr 07, 2015 @ 18:00:40
What does “shelf life” mean in this context? Is there any chance for electronic components to degrade in quality from lying around unused? That would be something new to me.
On another subject: I’ve spotted https://www.olimex.com/Products/USB-Modules/USB-CAP/ for the first time today. Did you always have this or is this a new product? In any case, a small plastic box for this would be useful to make it look less “naked” on a USB port.
Apr 07, 2015 @ 18:09:07
components leads tend to oxidize with time and get harder to solder, this apply mostly to the components which are left exposed to air, the components in sealed bags can stay many months without problem usually the shelf life is written on the packing
Apr 07, 2015 @ 18:41:46
you might need to have a temperature and humidity contorl storage space and keep the package in original vacuum sealed!
Apr 07, 2015 @ 21:52:05
Wow nice picture, thanks for sharing 🙂
Apr 08, 2015 @ 01:05:05
BTW, in what packages do these come – reels? If not, how do you feed them to you SMD machines?
Apr 08, 2015 @ 10:29:49
trays, SONY SI-F209 have tray feeder which can hold 80 trays with different components in it
Apr 10, 2015 @ 04:43:42
China’s SoC is not suite for long term project. I think we should focus on Freescale, TI…
Apr 10, 2015 @ 08:10:15
good advice, but recently Freescale shut down their imx development dept and fired all developers, they had to have imx7 according to their roadmap in 2012 but this is not to be released, they can’t sell for $40 what Chinese companies sell for $4, with the recent ‘merge’ with NXP the future of imx at least for me is unknown
TI also shut down their consumer and phone OMAP division, so what exactly makes these two companies more reliable?
Apr 10, 2015 @ 08:56:52
I’m working with a customer (from Germany) who’s using Freescale i.MX6 for in-car infotainment devices with high production volume per year. So I think these companies are more reliable than another companies. I know choosing SoC depend on application but quality, support services are the most important things that we need to consider. Some companies have cheaper SoC such as Marvell, Nvidia but unfortunately we need to sign NDA if we want to use their SoC. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Apr 10, 2015 @ 11:26:55
you are right, if you are big customer for automotive applications you can go to any vendor and negotiate good deal
Apr 10, 2015 @ 15:03:16
What about the A13 and the A13-SOMs? How long will they be available? It would be nice if one can see the number of available stock items in the online shop.
Apr 10, 2015 @ 15:59:43
A13-SOMs will be available forever 🙂
Apr 10, 2015 @ 17:30:03
“forever” 😀 Is Allwinner actively producing A13 – maybe it’s the only A-series single core processor they are still producing 🙂
+1 for the request “It would be nice if one can see the number of available stock items in the online shop.” – like Sparkfun for example – that would also leave the door open for back(pre)-orders and etc.
Apr 10, 2015 @ 17:32:09
+ customers are happy to see an estimate of when something will be available (again) if out of stock
May 01, 2015 @ 14:09:59
So how about producing a new board with chip that has fully FOSS GPU driver? There are two such chips, Adreno and VideoCore 4.