Intel Atom N550 Motherboard - COM EXPRESS form factor

[modernmystery]

I write software and did electronics at A-Level (16 - 19 school) so only have an elementary understanding of the whole arena.

I'm currently putting together a couple of hardware based projects as part of my own venture and have a niggling issue - the development costs incurred around purchasing the motherboards holding my CPUs.

Considering that Intel have published reference designs for motherboards holding their Atom chips, what would it take for a decent electronics engineer to build one of these boards?

Is it a matter of needing equipment to get it done or is the amount and nature of work such that is requires a professional big-company-backed team?

If I could meet and partner with someone or some people who could do this kind of thing it would make a HUGE difference to the numbers on my business plan and impact on product ideas I have going forward.

I'm currently looking at a taiwanese company's product:

http://www.ctcom.com.tw/images/pic/comtgn450.jpg

I know everything on this board can be purchased, so by looking at this board and Intel's reference designs, how hard is it for a decent electronics engineer to build these things?

Please post with any comments as I need to really understand what the average electronics engineer is capable of doing.

 

[MattyMatt]

I would like to start off by saying I am no electronics engineer, but I can say that I do quite a bit with the small form factor motherboards mainly in netbooks/laptops/highly customized equipment.

I can say that to build one from scratch, is no small feat. most of the time, you are looking at having a several layer thick board (I've heard as high as 7, if not higher!). There is also a heavy level of programming... depending on what you are looking at doing as well... and we're not talkin about C++ here, we're talking about ASM (assembly).

Honestly, its not easy and frankly, I don't even know the half of it... Hopefully you will get a little more encouragement.

Either way, good luck in your ventures!
Matty-