P2X8C4M64P Approved for Production
Ken Gracey
Posts: 7,390
Hello everybody,
Parallax took a big step today into the future by approving the P2 for production. The approval launches several different things: a big invoice to be paid, production parts to be ordered, the planning of a launch party at Parallax, and a carefully scheduled series of steps we'll be working on inside. . .all while trying to keep the business going.
You are all part of this process. When discussing whether we're ready to do this, Chip listed off every forum member and the P2 work they have been doing.
So we're all in!
Ken Gracey
Parallax took a big step today into the future by approving the P2 for production. The approval launches several different things: a big invoice to be paid, production parts to be ordered, the planning of a launch party at Parallax, and a carefully scheduled series of steps we'll be working on inside. . .all while trying to keep the business going.
You are all part of this process. When discussing whether we're ready to do this, Chip listed off every forum member and the P2 work they have been doing.
So we're all in!
Ken Gracey
4032 x 3024 - 1M
Comments
22 weeks. Not sure of MOQ, but we will order 10,000 chips.
Time to get serious
May the new baby grow and prosper!
May it cast its spell on all those who make its aquaintance.
I've been watching quietly from the sidelines- too out of my depth to be of any help.
Never-the-less, sharing in all the ups and downs, highs and lows.
What a team effort!
Chips genius
Ken and co's business accumen and devotion to customer service, to keep the boat afloat and making it all possible.
And the amazing forum members whose own genius, suggestions inspiration and enthusiasm have provided support tools test code and demonstrations of the power and uniqeness of this amazing processor.
Thanks to all.
Dave
Kind regards, Samuel Lourenço
Do we need P2 beanie stickers to go on the chips?
Probably not, right?
-Phil
Thank you for LUT sharing, too!
One could argue that this is a bad day for this forum, the P2 is finalized, no arguing about future features and slightly improvements, no Columbo style - one more change and then - it is DONE.
Ken is hopefully happy, Chip is about to relax and we all helped to make it happen, but this damned thing seems to just work. I am throwing all my code at it, made for rev A. Just simple changes to the source, the Ringbuffer does not comply yet, but every thing else runs fine, thanks to @ersmith and FlexGui/FastSpin.
Now I have to do some real PROJECT with it instead of just playing around. Horrible. I currently have none. OK, I get a solar system this month, maybe I could use it there somehow...
Mike
Now, I need to get Spin2 done, which WAS about a day from completion, before I blew it up again with multiple return values. There are lots of ideas I look forward to trying out, once that is working.
No need to fret over the end of Parallax Season2, Season three should start soo. Perhaps asking for things like 128 I/O, 16*1GHz cores, each chip having a set of direct expansion pins to enable ganging together N Prop3s to function as a single N*16 core chip (heck, maybe retro this into the P2 keeping Parallax Season 2 going a few more episodes), maybe NUMA rather than the current HUB method to access an all new 256Mb Write only RAM, ........ And there are likely as many new plot ideas for Season 3 as there are forum members. Maybe even an embedded minimal linux core for Heater........
Stay tuned for the all new Parallax Season 3..........
But, later.
For now?
We gotta build on this thing. It's done. Time to play.
And congratulations on achieving this great milestone!
The P2 is WAAAAY more competent!
C.W.
This: We have a new design of comercial products using the P1. We were able to reduced the HW complexity compared to the old generation that used Atmel MCU's quite dramatically.
Dang cool!
It's a mix of exciting emotions wrapped around with a tremendous challenge. We've gotten to this stage under our (collective) firepower but we've still got a long way to go to generate needed revenue from the P2. For those of you with accounting experience, you'll know the difference between revenue (necessary to exist) and income (something we hope for in future years). We need to pay final invoices and buy stock, and shift some of our staff to P2 tools/docs. To be totally transparent, our company is smaller than it has been in 20+ yrs with a staff level of 21 fully committed people. We are highly reliant on the community to help us get the P2 launched. Once we get a bit more organized internally we expect to communicate our needs more clearly and help organize some of the very productive efforts we're seeing on this forum.
I'm incredibly proud of Chip. He has patience like nobody else and a true love for what he does. Chip has had many obstacles in the P2 project, each of which was overcome. Our dad was a key supporter of the P2 and I've tried to be more supportive in his absence. We're "all in" at this stage, so to speak.
Without you, the P2 would not have gotten to this point and wouldn't get finished. In addition to your technical work, you can also help by sharing out our promotional sales (start next week) and consider giving our robots as gifts. I'm going into salesman mode for the month of December (and January, and February!). Expect to see me hawking robots door to door.
An investment in Parallax is an investment in one's self. <= maybe you can give me some more marketing statements like this one, which I use now and then.
Ken Gracey
Looking forward to the Spin2 IDE - It will open up so many possibilities using the Smart Pins, that no other chip has been able to accomplish.
In another thought - There was a Maker Faire in Orlando (FL) just 2 weeks ago, with well over 20 thousand people attending. A portable / shippable booth / signage / robot(?) / demos, with Parallax products would have been a great addition. Something that you can ship & share & rotate out, among first adapters & users of Parallax products who are going to these events anyway.
Remember tho', Parallax received a little more than 1,000 RevB chips that are marked Engineering Samples but are the 'Real Deal'. So we do have something to build upon
Packaged and tested, correct. My guess is this long lead time includes a bit of under-promise, over-deliver.
One tremendous operational improvement is that these chips arrive fully tested. We currently test P1s internally - and our team will be happy not to do that job anymore.
We have about 560 P2 chips set aside for the next 22 weeks. These chips will be carefully alotted for P2 Eval Boards, 4-packs, and a Parallax P2 module.
Ken Gracey