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In Insert Coin, we look at an exciting new tech project that requires funding before it can hit production. If you’d like to pitch a project, please send us a tip with “Insert Coin” as the subject line.

Parallel computing is normally reserved for supercomputers way out of the reach of average users — at least at the moment, anyway. Adapteva wants to challenge that with its Parallella project, designed to bring mouth-watering power to a board similar in size to the Raspberry Pi for as little as $99. It hopes to deliver up to 45GHz (in total) using its Epiphany multicore accelerators, that crucially, only chug 5 watts of juice under normal conditions. These goliath speeds currently mean high costs, which is why they need your funds to move out of the prototype stage and start cheap mass production. Specs for the board are as follows: a dual-core ARM A9 CPU running Ubuntu OS as standard, 1GB RAM, a microSD slot, two USB 2.0 ports, HDMI, Ethernet and a 16- or 64-core accelerator, with each core housing a 1GHz RISC processor, all linked “within a single shared memory architecture.”

An overriding theme of the Parallella project is the openness of the platform. When finalized, the full board design will be released, and each one will ship with free, open-source development tools and runtime libraries. In addition, full architecture and SDK documentation will be published online if-and-when the Kickstarter project reaches its funding goal of $750,000. That’s pretty ambitious, but we’re reminded of another crowd-funded venture which completely destroyed an even larger target. However, that sum will only be enough for Adapteva to produce the 16-core board, which reportedly hits 13GHz and 26 gigaflops, and is expected to set you back a measly $99. A speculative $3 million upper goal has been set for work to begin on the $199 64-core version, topping out at 45GHz and 90 gigaflops. Pledge options range from $99 to $5,000-plus, distinguished mainly by how soon you’ll get your hands on one. Big spenders will also be the first to receive a 64-core board when they become available. Adapteva’s Andreas Olofsson talks through the Parallella project in a video after the break, but if you’re already sold on the tiny supercomputer, head over to the source link to contribute before the October 27th closing date.

Continue reading Insert Coin: The Parallella project dreams of $99 supercomputers

Filed under: Misc

Insert Coin: The Parallella project dreams of $99 supercomputers originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Sep 2012 12:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Anyone who’s been wanting to make a game for the Oculus Rift headset, but hemmed and hawed during the Kickstarter run, now has a second chance. Oculus has kicked off its own pre-order campaign that offers the VR developer kit at the same $300 that it cost for the more proactive among us, or $345 for those beyond US borders. As an added incentive, the first 1,000 who pull the trigger still get a copy of Doom 3: BFG Edition to show what the Oculus Rift can do. Twiddling your thumbs will have cost at least a month — these new kits won’t ship until January — but the pre-order still means a head start over competing developers that haven’t yet seen the virtual light.

Filed under: Displays, Wearables

Oculus Rift developer kits go up for regular pre-order, catch VR procrastinators originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Sep 2012 16:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Did you really need to make this video, Research In Motion? Do you think your developers will love you more because of spending I don’t know how many hours in making this… this… I don’t know what this is. More »

Twitter has ruffled a few feathers recently, so when CEO Dick Costolo took the stage at the Online News Association conference in San Francisco, he took the opportunity to put some minds at rest. First he dismissed the idea that the service would become a media company by forcing users to the site or official app for content, before reasserting his belief in syndication. Costolo then went on to imply that the reason behind the tighter (and unpopular) API controls was ensuring quality — stating that Twitter would reach its full potential now there’s more control over how tweets are delivered. With boots strapped, we can look forward to some new features, such as the option to curate messages that are published (such as during live events) plus tweets with interactive features like polls during live sports games. The famous 140 character limit is to remain, but will also serve as a “caption for additional functionality.” Perhaps of most interest to disenfranchised developers, however, was the mention of application functionality in tweets, where short messages could contain small interactive apps. Something for devs to get potentially get back on board with? We hope so. But until further details unfold, we’re still left considering our options.

Filed under: Internet

Twitter CEO reveals plans for interactive tweets, content curation, reinforces belief in syndication originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 Sep 2012 14:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Developers have their work cut out. Even if we (impolitely) sidestep the likes of Windows Phone, BlackBerry and the rest, those coders often have to pitch their work across web, iOS and Android. Google’s trying to make that job a little easier, introducing a new tool that automatically converts Java source code into Objective-C, which is used in iPad and iPhone apps. While the J2ObjC tool can’t tackle the UI for these, it does allow developers to craft other parts (including data access and nuts-and-bolts programming) into an easily shareable code without editing. Some existing Google projects already utilize the new translator, but its results remains a little temperamental — the tool hasn’t translated all possible paths just yet, and many Java devs have, according to the project page, “a slightly different way of using Java.”

Google releases new Java to iOS source code translator originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Sep 2012 10:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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