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wow that chip is going to be fun to solder with

Makes the QFN packages of all the competing chips look positively hobbyist-friendly. (This seems to be aimed at the same market as stuff like the Nordic Semi nRF52 series and the TI CC2650. Which still aren't trivial to build boards for, but quite a few makers have managed it with the older nRF51822.)

I wonder if it's even possible to build a PCB for this without using expensive microvias.

I couldn't find much data on the Curie module, but it looks like the only pins required are power and slow io, so I can't imagine it's a super dense bga or anything. Even on the high end Intel socs with over 1k balls a good designer can escape all the signals without microvias.

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