Parallax MIA Again at ESC
Sal Ammoniac
Posts: 213
I was hoping to see Parallax (particularly Parallax Semiconductor) this year at ESC in San Jose, but, alas, they were a no-show again.
With thousands of professional embedded developers and managers in attendance, I would have thought that Parallax would have jumped at the chance to present its wares, but perhaps they didn't want to be buried under the ARM onslaught, which was front and center again this year.
With thousands of professional embedded developers and managers in attendance, I would have thought that Parallax would have jumped at the chance to present its wares, but perhaps they didn't want to be buried under the ARM onslaught, which was front and center again this year.
Comments
Thanks, and we probably should have been there but it was far from a clear marketing choice at this point.
We don't make a habit of attending any particular kind of embedded show. Through the years you will find us at a variety of embedded shows other than the one in San Jose, including Embedded World in Germany, Sensors Expo in Chicago, ESC in Boston, etc. This particular season we're also occupied with Parallax EXPO, Maker Faire, USA Science Festival, and an assortment of DIY Den/Hackerspaces. Several of us will be in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong on top of this, not to mention our marketing team is totally wrapped up in a new web site (can't wait to share their efforts!). I don't think I've ever seen Parallax be more productive than we are at the present moment. I can't thank our team and customers enough - after a while another "thank you" will almost start to sound artificial. . . but they're working hard!
ESC San Jose has experienced a dramatic decline in attendance. It used to require more space and the halls were crammed with people - our team reported that yesterday that the attendance was thin.
We'll be at ESC in 2013 for certain, and probably an assortment of other professional trade shows. As you know, we're in the final stages of a very significant R&D effort.
I'm willing to bet that you'll enjoy Parallax EXPO/UPEW as much as ESC - hopefully you're coming here in April.
Ken Gracey
I cannot, however, see Parallax Semiconductor getting many big design wins (>100,000 units/year) as a result of attendance at these venues.
Oh, and your team must have been at a different ESC than the one I attended. Crowds were so thick it was hard to move around and popular demos and talks were standing room only.
The show is a shade of its former self when it was held in the Moscone Center and Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, but I still find it interesting. There is ARM there, but a huge amount of other stuff too. Microchip always has interesting demos, and Intel had a musical instrument art project that occupied a 12' diameter arena, and worked by shooting balls up into the air and hitting xylophone type bars and high hats, all coordinated by some embedded processor.
The thing I enjoyed most was a chance to chat at length one on one with a LeCroy engineer, who was very proficient at getting around the interface of the new 12 bit series and helped me understand issues I had about the statistical and spectral packages, still useful on my almost antique 9374 that I bought off ebay. For their new 60GHz 'scope, the probes cost $1kilobuck per gigihertz, so the price for just one probe costs far more than a Prius.
FWIW, XMOS is ~6000 miles from the ESC venue, Parallax around 150.
Now the things that would be of interest aren't ready yet.
GNU C for the Prop I is still Alpha IIRC
The Prop II won't be ready until probably 4Q of this year.
Makes sense for them to wait until next year.