Adapteva Distributes Initial Production Versions of the Parallella Computing Platform
LEXINGTON, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Adapteva today announced delivery of the first Parallella computers ordered through its highly successful Kickstarter campaign. The Parallella, equipped with Adapteva’s breakthrough 16- and 64-core Epiphany multicore processors, is a platform with unprecedented performance and flexibility which brings parallel computing to a new generation of programmers in a low-cost, credit card-sized package.
Initial prototypes were shipped to major backers in December of 2012, but this is the first delivery of the credit card form factor Parallella board. These early “Beta” boards will go out to Kickstarter backers of the ROLF, 64-CORE-PLUS, and DEVELOPER support levels.
Additionally, starting this week, pre-orders of the 16-core Parallella platform for the general public can be made at: www.adapteva.com.
After some final refinements, the remaining 6,300 Parallella’s ordered via Kickstarter will be delivered by the end of the summer. The standard versions for non-Kickstarter backers will have the Zync-7010 dual-core instead, with the 7020 offered as an upgrade. Delivery to the entire Kickstarter community will be fulfilled first and general availability orders will ship later this fall. Parallella boards will be available in different build configurations with a starting price of $99.
“The Kickstarter community took a chance that we could deliver an entirely new type of computing platform for only $99,” said Andreas Olofsson, Adapteva Founder and CEO. “We could not have done this without the passion and backing of this unique community and I’m excited to see where the developer community will take this platform in the future.”
The process for designing and delivering the $99 Parallella board was intensive, with a redesign of everything from the Epiphany chip packaging, for better thermal characteristics, to stabilizing and optimizing the FPGA logic and Epiphany software drivers and SDK.
The final Parallella design includes:
- Zynq-7020 dual-core ARM A9 CPU
- Epiphany Multicore Accelerator (16 or 64 cores)
- 1GB SDRAM
- MicroSD Card
- USB 2.0 (two)
- Four expansion connectors [option]
- Ethernet 10/100/1000
- HDMI connection
- Ships with free open source Epiphany development tools that include C compiler, multicore debugger, Eclipse IDE, OpenCL SDK/compiler, and run time libraries.
- Dimensions are 3.4” x 2.1”
About Adapteva
Adapteva, Inc. is a privately-held semiconductor technology company based in Lexington, Massachusetts. Adapteva has developed the world’s most energy efficient multicore microprocessor architecture, immediately boosting by an order of magnitude the number of cores that can be integrated on a single chip. Adapteva’s breakthrough architecture will have an immediate impact on a wide range of end-user products, from compact mobile devices to next generation supercomputers. The first semiconductor company to successfully fund a project of Kickstarter, Adapteva’s Parallella platform will bring parallel computing capabilities to a new population of programmers. For more information on the company visit: https://www.adapteva.com or the Parallella Forum at http://forums.parallella.org/index.php.