I can't help wondering though, has anyone had success with fewer, larger caps? From what I can see, all the grounds are on the centre pad, all the pins on 3-sides are commoned internally to VDD, then split out to dozens of tiny caps, via'ed down to the ground plane. Does this have some inductance or ESR benefit, are the caps just cheaper, or is this just a design that works, so why mess with it?
More little caps in parallel have lower inductance than a few big ones. Maybe 15 caps is overkill, but it works, so why mess with it ?
I could try mounting fewer, but the problem is that if it doesn't work properly, I'd have to hand solder the rest, which is a terrible job.
Cheers.