Parallella $99 board now open hardware on Github

Although Adapteva are still fulfilling their Kickstarter committment, their shop is already open for preorders of the 16-core Epiphany board for November delivery.  Three options appear to be available:

If "No GPIO" means none, zero, zilch, that doesn't appear very enticing, I must say.  If this describes the situation accurately, the range of application of the basic board will be a lot narrower than expected.  And if the Zynq-7020-based Parallella-16 costs $199, then the price of the Parallella-64 is probably going to be very unfriendly.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

If "No GPIO" means none, zero, zilch, that doesn't appear very enticing, I must say.  If this describes the situation accurately, the range of application of the basic board will be a lot narrower than expected.  And if the Zynq-7020-based Parallella-16 costs $199, then the price of the Parallella-64 is probably going to be very unfriendly.

Given there's an 'optional upgrade' for the GPIO connectors it seems likely that the difference is simply down to installing the connectors.  Any volunteers to hand solder four of those ?

In some ways you can see the reasoning, not having them will not prevent you doing software things on the Epiphany processor.  If you really want gpio, and don't care so much about the Epiphany there are probably better boards.

Am I correct in thinking that the only difference between the 7010 and 7020 is more FPGA space ?  If so, what's this board really meant to be, a dev board for parallel processing on the Epiphany, or an FPGA dev board ?

selsinork wrote:

 

what's this board really meant to be, a dev board for parallel processing on the Epiphany, or an FPGA dev board ?

If Adapteva had asked themselves that question very clearly and seriously, I suspect that Parallella would have a very different design and a very different cost.  As it stands, the main effect of the board will be to promote the Zynq range to a far greater number of people than Xilinx would normally expect, but to a far smaller number of people than Adapteva would like as an audience for Epiphany.

It's a design from heaven ... for Xilinx.

I agree that the choice of Zynq seems a bit odd - is it that the Epiphany chip is not seriously useable with out the support of a 'big' ARM processor and  an FPGA to glue them together.

I just had  a quick look on their website and it seemed that all theri applications diagrams showed the Epiphany connectedd to an FPGA.

MK

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

As it stands, the main effect of the board will be to promote the Zynq range to a far greater number of people than Xilinx would normally expect, but to a far smaller number of people than Adapteva would like as an audience for Epiphany.

My feeling was always that Epiphany would have a very small audience. Both the RPi and BBB have shown there's a market for a low priced board, but that a large section of the buyers are thinking 'media center'.

Price wise, $99 doesn't compare well. The circuitco page is showing 74020 BBB shipped as of today.  So you have to wonder if the Parallella can ship enough to get to Michaels prices for 100K Zynq devices. Maybe they can, or maybe Xilinx have given them a good deal up-front, but either way I feel you're right and the Zynq will end up overshadowing the Epiphany.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

As it stands, the main effect of the board will be to promote the Zynq range to a far greater number of people than Xilinx would normally expect, but to a far smaller number of people than Adapteva would like as an audience for Epiphany.

My feeling was always that Epiphany would have a very small audience. Both the RPi and BBB have shown there's a market for a low priced board, but that a large section of the buyers are thinking 'media center'.

Price wise, $99 doesn't compare well. The circuitco page is showing 74020 BBB shipped as of today.  So you have to wonder if the Parallella can ship enough to get to Michaels prices for 100K Zynq devices. Maybe they can, or maybe Xilinx have given them a good deal up-front, but either way I feel you're right and the Zynq will end up overshadowing the Epiphany.

selsinork wrote:

 

Price wise, $99 doesn't compare well. The circuitco page is showing 74020 BBB shipped as of today.  So you have to wonder if the Parallella can ship enough to get to Michaels prices for 100K Zynq devices. Maybe they can, or maybe Xilinx have given them a good deal up-front, but either way I feel you're right and the Zynq will end up overshadowing the Epiphany.

Whereas if Adapteva had mounted the Epiphany on a barebones Arduino shield or BeagleBone cape or Pi plate with minimal glue logic, the board could have ridden the huge wave of established ARM and AVR enthusiast communities and at Pi-type prices.  This seems clear from our ballpark cost examination above.

Note that if 100k volumes would make Zynq prices plummet, they would do the same to the cost of the Epiphany chip, and so the price imbalance would remain.  Volume does not change the overall picture of a fundamentally misplaced choice of host pairing.  And with the greater volumes, Adapteva would even be making a profit in this early experimental phase, instead of having to pay the bulk of proceeds from sales to Xilinx.

Just imagine if the Pi or BBB contained an additional component that is many times as expensive as their main SoCs.  The "Pi price niche" would not have materialized, and hence neither would have the enthusiastic mass adoption of Pi and the boards that followed it.  Adapteva may have made a big mistake.