$99 Parallella Fire Sale

Fire_fire_flames

 

Those of you that know me well understand that optimism is probably simultaneously my biggest strength and biggest weakness.:-)

Without eternal optimism there is no way I would have kept going with Adapteva for 7 years. Unfortunately, optimism has also caused me all kinds of pain: over-committing on schedules, aggressive pricing, and over estimated market demand.

By most standards the Parallella has been a huge success. The Parallella has now shipped to 10,000 individuals and is still selling at a steady clip at Digikey, RS Components, and Amazon.

Unfortunately, the Parallella is not selling at the “Raspberry-Pi ‘ ish” rate that my optimism had fooled me into projecting. As a result, we are now sitting on a pretty big stash of paid-for Parallella inventory that we HAVE to get rid of!!

For those of you who have been waiting for a price drop, this is your chance. We are dropping the “desktop” price from $149 to $99 on Amazon until we get rid of the excess build up.

Sincerely,

Andreas Olofsson

(ps. Just so there is no misunderstanding…this is not a going out of business sale:-) The future for Parallella, Epiphany, and Adapteva is looking better than ever!!)

 

50 Comments

  • Fred says:

    Ah! Too bad the fire sale isn’t going in Europe too! I am sure they’ll sell fast on Amazon in the US anyway. Cheers.

  • manuti says:

    I think the same as Fred, go to sale on amazon in Europe. We are a strong and big open source community hard and soft. It will be a good selling point if we can have free premium.

  • Frank Carver says:

    Damn.. That caught me too. I would have rushed to buy one, to help you out if nothing else. Is there any reason _why_ we can’t buy them from outside the USA?

  • Rajeev says:

    Fire-sale needs to be in Canada too. Also, I see one big issue that all embedded work is closely tied to linux-linux environment only. Something needs to be done from Windows-linux environment. I feel nVidia Tegra TK1 better balanced ..any insight from your side?

  • Ed says:

    Agree with Fred, hopefully it will also boost activity too, of note this week was discussion of SDN acceleration via a smart NIC using FPGAs at the ONS summit during the Azure prez. As it happens, in the field, I came across this:
    “An Open Source Kickstarter SDN project based on Zynq? For $649? Wowzers!”
    http://forums.xilinx.com/t5/Xcell-Daily-Blog/An-Open-Source-Kickstarter-SDN-project-based-on-Zynq-For-649/ba-p/563248

    Telcos should really be paying closer attention and collaborating with both their vendors *and* Adapteva to evolve their infrastructure, I hope this price reduction helps foster more experimentation and research in the domain.

  • Sweet99 says:

    $99 is a sweet price point, and one that makes me want to click buy. However, I’m not in the US nor do I have usable US address. It seems a little unfair that only US residents are able to take advantage of this opportunity. Or is there a way non-US residents can benefit from this temporary sale ?

    I understand that there may be issues such as where the inventory is currently located and maybe agreements you have with suppliers who will ship to non-US addresses. But think how much more the community could be expanded by giving this opportunity to the world… And for the longer term, acquiring new users now, can only be good.

  • John wilson says:

    Why sell cheap in the us when you can sell to the UK for full price?

  • W says:

    US – only? I guess you don’t want to get rid of them *that* bad then.

  • Hugo Sereno Ferreira says:

    I second the European sale request. I was almost clicking “buy” when I realised I was at Amazon US 🙁

  • 2/3 our market is outside the US, so I am well aware what we are missing out on in terms of sales…

    We will do what we can to provide affordable boards to everyone, not just US customers. The boards is manufactured in the US and there are logistical costs and VAT taxes that will drive up costs in other parts of the world. This is largely out of our control.

    If you are looking for a cheaper alternative you should know that we do ship FREE boards abroad for each proper C function contributed. More details here:

    https://parallella.org/2015/06/02/write-one-c-function-and-get-a-free-computer

  • weps says:

    Well with this announcement and all the recent efforts Adapteva is making, how could I say no?

    See you on the boards!

  • Ivan says:

    Oh and it doesn’t sheep to Australia as well. It’s a shame as I would really like to get one or two boards.

  • Simon says:

    Its a good product, I just need to figure out how to code first – that bounty for the PiCamera module is pretty sweet! Looks like all you’ll need is an i2C interface created.

  • […] a micro USB port, and some expansion I/Os. But to get rid of some stock, the company has decided to temporary decrease the desktop version price to $99 on […]

  • Raul says:

    Yay..! I Iive in South America… =(

  • Alan says:

    Several people have noted this sale is USA only. Worse than that, Amazon will not sell me the board at ANY price.
    Just to clarify – when Amazon refuse to ship a product internationally, who should we protest to?

    DigiKey say they DO sell internationally, but they aren’t offering this deal. Something sounds wrong here.
    Either in the way you are treating the dealers handling your product, or your end customers, you LOOK like you are playing favorites [with Amazon being the preferred dealer].

    That’s not a good look.

  • Disappointed says:

    Amazon: This item does not ship to Poland. Please check other sellers who may ship internationally.

  • Joe Max says:

    The price drop knocked me off the fence so I am soon to be “on board” :-). However I might have gone sooner if there was a starter pack. I have to go to multiple sites to get a case, fan, powersupply. A preconfigured SD card would ne a nice gesture as well. All of this could be done easily on Amazon. Anyway, looking forward to seeing what this puppy can do ;-}

  • Milan says:

    Too bad it’s not sold in India as well, where such boards come in really handy, to come up with product ideas, but then dicount(s) really matter here.

  • Parallella has been in stock at RS components since last summer. They do sell to India, Australia and many other countries.

  • Sorry…you can always buy them at Digikey, RS components. As explained, this was a short term sale geared towards getting rid of local inventory.

  • 1.) You can buy it from Digikey

    2.) It’s open source. Is “someone” us as in Adapteva or the community?

    3.) Tegra TK1 is a fine machine at $190. Here’s a quick comp. Short answer, if you just want a work horse for crunching math, buy the Tegra.

    Tegra:
    More Performance
    Bigger board
    No FPGA
    Not open
    Much more power

    Parallella:
    Less performance
    Much smaller
    Open source
    Comes with FPGA

  • Thanks for the link! If we had a second ethernet port (someone just needs to spin a daughter card), then we could have a very nice low cost platform for SDN research.

    Telcos aren’t paying attention, but companies that sell to telcos ARE paying attention!

  • Honestly, I wish we could give it away for free. Unfair or not, this is a temporary sale to get rid of local inventory.

  • If you are only interested in buying at $99, we can’t help. This is a temporary local sale. Note that you can always buy from RS components and Digikey.

  • We would love to manufacture in South America to solve this problem!The board is open source, so this is not be a problem. Someone should contact me if they have a lead to a on a factory. My trip to Brazil and Argentina last fall did not yield any satisfactory results.

  • Good point! We are spread very thin right now, but we’ll see what we can do.

  • This is a temporary sale to get rid of local inventor. Parallella has been in stock at RS components since last summer. They do sell to India, Australia and many other countries.

  • This is a temporary sale to get rid of local inventory. Parallella has been shipping internationally from RS components and Digikey since last year. If you are ONLY interested in buying the board at $99, then we have a price mismatch and I am afraid that there is not much we can do. There is no steady state solution at that price.

  • This is a temporary sale to get rid of local inventor. Parallella has been shipping internationally from RS components and Digikey since last year. If you are ONLY interested in buying the board at $99, then we have a price mismatch and I am afraid that there is not much we can do. There is no steady state solution at that price.

  • This is a temporary sale to get rid of local inventor. Parallella has been shipping internationally from RS components and Digikey since last year. If you are ONLY interested in buying the board at $99, then we have a price mismatch and I am afraid that there is not much we can do. There is no steady state solution at that price.

  • This is a temporary sale to get rid of local inventor. Parallella has been shipping internationally from RS components and Digikey since last year. If you are ONLY interested in buying the board at $99, then we have a price mismatch and I am afraid that there is not much we can do. There is no steady state solution at that price.

  • The interface is MIPI CSI, (not I2C) so it’s a bit more complicated than that.

  • Joe Max says:

    Maybe appoint a strategic distributor who would agree to carry a reasonable range of boards and accessories. Let them do all the retail work while you focus on the evangelism 🙂

  • Anand Shah says:

    hi milan,

    I can get it for you, if you are interested… will be in india on/around july 4-5 (chennai)

  • Stefan says:

    It’s not very user-friendly to buy it in Europe. RS don’t even talk to you if you’re not a corporation. Guess digikey is the only real option.
    Will there be any new distributors in Europe soon?

  • JQR says:

    I have some relatives in the US this month, they can buy the board there from Amazon.com and “import” it on their way back to Europe. How does guarantee apply in this case?

  • Tom says:

    Does a micro USB OTG Hub work for “Host Mode” on parallella? I see these 3 in one deals to get 2 female USB A for keyboard and mouse with a separate female micro USB option to provide extra power. I read somewhere in the reference PDF that OTG was removed. Not that I need OTG but most new hubs today seem to have it if you want to plug directly into a micro usb without getting separate regular usb hub with a micro usb (male) to regular usb adaptor (female).

  • Tom says:

    Is there a huge USB problem with this desktop board? It seems users are forced to go headless.

    https://parallella.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=1650&hilit=OTG&start=70#p14892

    What is the best way to use a mouse and keyboard see my above post… I wanted to order a complete combo kit to get started and this is holding things up…

  • Tom,
    A small percentage of customers have experienced USB problems at reset, but once the USB comes up it is stable. What we know is that it’s dependent on the specific board, the powerup condition, and the equipment being attached to the hub. That being said, I and many many others are using the USB successfully with hubs, wifi dongles, and wireless keyboards.
    Andreas

  • In for 2 (considered 4 but resisted for some reason). Any suggestions on case, fan, and power supplies? If there’s a case with 4 slots…

  • Tom says:

    Thanks Andreas. I ordered the desktop parallella on Amazon yesterday. I held off on ordering a usb hub & micro hdmi for the time being. I have a couple of questions.

    I’ll be developing from a Mac. I would like to use an IDE such as Xcode or Eclipse but I read in your Epiphany SDK Reference that the Eclipse plugin is out of date. So are there recommended C++ Editor alternatives?

    Is there an official parallella wiki? The link on the main site looks empty, I read the quick start guide, PDFs, github yada. It seems like theres many ways to get started like PAL, erlang, OpenCL, go, u-boot, yada. But I don’t know what’s current, what’s changed. Searching the forums is a bit tedious.

  • Daniel says:

    I have ordered 2 units at 9/19/2014 (Order #4571) from this web site, The parcel kept months in Custom house because it was shipping without correct paperwork….. Now the parcel was returned by DHL with tracking number 9659627946 and signed by H.HOULEY at 3 Jun 2015. I never got the refund or an email from you. Also any reply to my emails. Amazing customer support.

  • Bill Vanyo says:

    Are these still supposed to be available at $99? It’s $149 on Amazon for last few days.

  • Tom says:

    As an observer, looks like you are correct. This device was $99 but is now $149 again. http://camelcamelcamel.com/Adapteva-Parallella-16-Desktop-Computer/product/B0091UD6TM

  • David White says:

    Fire Sale must be over..Amazon still showing $199.00 as of today.

  • David White says:

    Correction $149.00

  • sanju singh says:

    Hello. I am a student of computer science , studying in India. I am doing a parallel programing paper as part of my course.
    I would like to know how this product is actually performing? Is it really as good as a supercomputer ? I would like to know what kind of work it is used for? Can we use it for doing extremely heavy computations ? My interest is to find out if this device can use it for implementing computer vision algorithms.
    I wish to present this product to my department. so , any inputs will be of great help.

    Thank you

  • Michael Cap says:

    I managed to find the parallella at RS Components! http://www.rs-components.com/index.html

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