This project has been blogged here almost a month ago. Now they are closer to their deadline ($105,345 needed). Recently they've provided many interesting updates on the project (I wish they've done that sooner).
As a backer I'm excited about the potential applications it could support. As John pointed out in his original post, not only this could be used for future autopilots, but also for vision based navigation systems.
more information from their kickstarter page,
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-supercomputer-for-everyone
some excerpts from their page,
The following list shows the major components planned for the Parallella computer:
- Zynq-7010 Dual-core ARM A9 CPU
- Epiphany Multicore Accelerator (16 or 64 cores)
- 1GB RAM
- MicroSD Card
- USB 2.0 (two)
- Two general purpose expansion connectors
- Ethernet 10/100/1000
- HDMI connection
- Ships with Ubuntu OS
- 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''
Comments
@CrashingDutchman: great!
Congratulations to Adapteva folks! The've made it. The graph looks interesting towards the end. :)
http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-supercompute...
I just backed one!
@Ruwan: Thanks for remembering me that this Kickstarter project was active!
Yup they made it.. Under 9 hours, they got remaining $100k! :-). Can't believe they have 19 hours more! I was refreshing the page for a while felt like they got a backer in every one minute or so..
It should also be mentioned that the Zynq-7010 Dual-core ARM9 they announced is going to be used as the main CPU. Not only has a NEON media-processing engine and Vector-FPU. But also comes with a built in 28K cell FPGA. So the potential of this platform with Dual-core ARM, FPGA and 16 Accelerator cores on a single board, is just enormous.