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P2X8C4M64P Approved for Production — Parallax Forums

P2X8C4M64P Approved for Production

Ken GraceyKen Gracey Posts: 7,386
edited 2019-11-21 21:03 in Propeller 2
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
P2Approved.jpg
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Comments

  • Congratulations, and thank you everyone on the forum for your contributions!!!
  • Wow! That's a big step. Congratulations!!
  • jmgjmg Posts: 15,140
    Ken Gracey wrote: »
    .. production parts to be ordered...
    What's the FAB leadtime and MOQ ?

  • cgraceycgracey Posts: 14,133
    jmg wrote: »
    Ken Gracey wrote: »
    .. production parts to be ordered...
    What's the FAB leadtime and MOQ ?

    22 weeks. Not sure of MOQ, but we will order 10,000 chips.
  • Thoroughly *approve* of this decision.

    Time to get serious
  • Congratulations to all concerned.
    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
  • Nice to read that! Peter, Evan, and many others tirelessly took part on this endeavor, which ended to be a big success. I'm very happy!

    Kind regards, Samuel Lourenço
  • This is great news Ken, Chip and all others at Parallax!
  • Congrats to all at Parallax!
  • RaymanRayman Posts: 13,805
    Excellent...

    Do we need P2 beanie stickers to go on the chips?
    Probably not, right?
  • I am gonna etch one of mine, just saying...
  • Wow! This is a HUGE (maybe risky?) step. Best of luck!

    -Phil
  • It's amazing. Finally, the P2 story has crystalized. Now, its the community of developers to create success stories with it.
  • K2K2 Posts: 691
    edited 2019-11-22 02:24
    What a fascinating journey this has been! What a great product it produced! Thanks for letting us be on the distribution list. :smile:

    Thank you for LUT sharing, too!
  • Gosh, I just realized that I lost my best soap opera, since ~10 years I follow the P2 saga religiously on a daily basis, and now?

    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
  • cgraceycgracey Posts: 14,133
    If the weather permits, we will enhance the design over time. Still more use for FPGA boards, etc.

    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.
  • @msrobots,

    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..........
  • I want an interface to external memory someday, perhaps with that high address bit, currently unused. That half MB of RAM can be banked, managed in various ways.

    But, later.

    For now?

    We gotta build on this thing. It's done. Time to play.

  • Congrats Parallax! This is truly a momentous milestone of accomplishment. See you at the launch party!
  • Cluso99Cluso99 Posts: 18,066
    Hooray :sunglasses::sunglasses::sunglasses:

    And congratulations on achieving this great milestone!
  • Ahle2Ahle2 Posts: 1,178
    Congratulations for finalizing the best microcontroller ever! :smile: That's a honest professional opinion. 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. The reason is that we can do parallel determistic stuff in a single MCU and do software pheriperal that would normally require extra IC's with other MCU's.

    The P2 is WAAAAY more competent!
  • Congratulations!

    C.W.


  • Congrats! Amazingly, I didn't say that before. Meant to.

    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!


  • One not so small step for Parallax, one giant leap for mankind. Congratulations !!
  • Congratulations to Chip, Ken and all the Parallax crew! Definitely a very, very important milestone. This has been, and will continue to be an extremely enjoyable journey 👍.
  • Ken GraceyKen Gracey Posts: 7,386
    edited 2019-11-22 19:24
    Thank you for the many congratulations.

    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
  • Yes, Congrats to all! And thanks for informing us of your decision so early on. As to that 22-week leadtime, I wonder if that includes packaging. Either way, great news! Time to blow the party horns.
  • Congratulations Parallax! This is truly a momentous milestone of accomplishment, and you should be proud of the P2. Breathe !!!
    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.
  • Cluso99Cluso99 Posts: 18,066
    22 weeks is probably chips into Parallax.

    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 :)
  • Cluso99 wrote: »
    22 weeks is probably chips into Parallax.

    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
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