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Parallella 'supercomputers' headed to early backers, 16-core boards up for general pre-order

Following its successful Kickstarter campaign, Adapteva flashed the production versions of its Parallella "supercomputer" boards in April, penning in a loose summer delivery date. Today, the company reports that the first "beta" units have begun winding their way to backers who pledged at the DEVELOPER, 64-CORE-PLUS and ROLF levels. Other backers should receive their boards by summer's end "after some final refinements." For those who missed the crowd-funding window, you too can get a Parallella, as Adapteva has now opened up general pre-orders for the 16-core version on its website. While all Kickstarter-bought boards will bear a Zynq-7020 SoC, new pre-orders are configured with a 7010 as standard, though you can upgrade to the 7020 if you lay down a little more dough. However, newcomers will be treated to "Gen-1" boards, which will offer slight improvements over earlier versions, such as reduced power consumption and an added serial port three-pin header. You'll find the basic 16-core board going for $99 over at Adapteva's store, with an expected October delivery date. The company tells us the 64-core version will also be available for public consumption, with pre-orders beginning in Q4 this year.

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Adapteva Distributes Initial Production Versions of the Parallella Computing Platform

Proving delivery on concept, Adapteva also announces availability for pre-orders for general public

Lexington, MA, July 23, 2013 – 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"