What is the protocol for a commercial enquiry for devices?

[dms1guy]

I have invested a lot of time and resources to investigate the Epiphany architecture, and like many other people can see that it's potential goes way beyond mainstream approaches.

Eventually there is a need to progress from technical investigations to commercial projects, which entails business plans being drawn up and funding sourced.

The business plans need to go into detail about component sourcing. Whilst the Parallella board is both a development board and good enough for many projects, there is a requirement for some projects to develop custom boards. For such 'custom board' projects, without input from Adapteva on the sourcing side (re what is required to get things moving), it is not possible to get a custom board project off the ground.

I have heard suggestions that there are problems with sourcing more devices (of any kind) due to new masks being required, but I would prefer to know the specifics from Adapteva rather than 3rd parties. That way I know what to tell the venture partners who are asking questions I can't answer. It may be that whatever the problem is can be resolved. But it is not going to happen without dialogue.

To that end, I sent an introductory email to sales@adapteva.com ... 2 weeks ago.

So far, absolutely zero response ... no acknowledgement ... nothing

So what am I supposed to do at this point ?
Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

[peteasa]

I am sure that you have seen the post viewtopic.php?f=45&t=2121&p=15681&hilit=digikey#p15681 where they suggest the first point of contact for volume purchases should be digikey or rs components. My guess is that as this is a startup type operation the guys dont have time to repeat posts and are busy with the next generation of product. Interesting then that I contacted digikey about the porcupine boards.. via the online messaging.. they told me that the porcupine boards had no predicted delivery date (the part was and is showing 0 on the inventory) so I ordered anyway expecting to wait for some time... but got the parcel in the post the next day! So contacting RS and or Digikey may not be very productive but is the recommended first point of contact.

[dms1guy]

[peteasa]

Not sure best approach now that they have announced working on the new chip with new sponsor... I am a bit surprised that you have not had any response. I did a quick search for the phone number for them and found http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stock ... d=79100159. If I were you I would try every method of communication till you get a response!

[dms1guy]

@peteasa, I really appreciate your efforts to help.

On Adapteva's web site, under the contacts section, they have provided a single email as the official point of contact, and I have written an introductory email to that officially sanctioned point of contact.

Sufficient time has passed that it is clear that Adapteva do not intend to respond to my enquiry. As such, I see little point in finding alternative means of communications as communication path is not the problem, rather it is Adapteva's lack of motivation to send even a simple acknowledgement to my email.

I'm sure they have their reasons, but it certainly comes as a surprise.

I guess I'll just have to wait for public announcements of device availability.

[Nicolas-06]

Interesting, I have the same problem. I sent several emails, contacted them on twitter, and so on but did not get an answer. A company that doesn't answer to business emails... this is odd.

I also noticed that the copyright on their website is 2014. Can someone confirm that there are still people working at Adapteva (apart from Andreas Olofsson)?

[dms1guy]

Based on some posts I have read, it appears that the chip manufacturing process on which the Epiphany devices were originally manufactured is no longer available, which presumably means that a whole new set of masks have to be funded before any more Epiphany devices can be manufactured.

That leaves the existing stock of Epiphany devices, which presumably is allocated to manufacture of Parallella boards as that gives the best return on that stock of existing chips, as well as continuing to promote and support a user base, until such time as funding can be secured to generate new masks.

So my guess is that Adapteva have made a policy decision to simply not address any queries on supply of Epiphany devices to avoid discussing commercial details that they would rather treat as confidential at this time.

[albertoge]

Hi all,
I have the same problem (no answers...).
This is a little bit surprising, and makes it difficult to assess the opportunity to evaluate the architecture for new designs.
Of course, the device is very interesting also for industrial applications.
OK, I can buy a Parallela board and work on it for my technical curiosity; but - perhaps - I'll use that time only if I can be quite sure that it's an investigation on an architecture that will be available.
I hope to hear precise statements and dates...