The MIPS and Creator Online Presence
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Paul Boddie
Jul 14, 2018, 7:31:34 PM7/14/18
to MIPS Creator CI20
Out of curiosity, I was having a look around at online resources for the Creator platforms and the situation looks pretty dismal. On the MIPS Web site's platforms page [1], there are a lot of products that refer to obsolete Imagination Technologies Web sites, and the MIPS Creator CI20 information references the long-gone Imagination store.
Since Imagination's takeover, not even the Imagination site has alternative retailer information any more, but I am guessing here that the Creator range is no longer supported by MIPS and neither the CI20 or CI40 are being sold by the nominated retailers (Mouser and RS Online, if I remember correctly). So I suppose we can consider ourselves lucky to have acquired our devices while they were still on sale.
I think it almost goes without saying that various dedicated support sites for the Creator products are also no longer available. At least, the foresight of someone at MIPS/ImgTec to put information on the eLinux wiki paid off and we can at least refer to that. As someone dabbling with the CI20, as opposed to the CI40, I guess I am also fortunate not to be relying on any cloud infrastructure that has presumably also gone offline.
The MIPS site is a bit of a placeholder, really. Various blog articles reference the Imagination site, although the article selection seems to have been filtered somewhat to feature MIPS-related topics (and similarly, ImgTec's blog has been purged of Creator articles, allowing them to focus on PowerVR once again). But it should perhaps also be noted that some of the platforms mentioned on the site may not have any MIPS connection at all, with things like Samsung Exynos being featured originally due to some PowerVR connection, I guess.
It's all a bit of a mess and rather sad, I think. I guess it's up to the maker community to make boards like these now, but one would think that MIPS might want some kind of inexpensive development board solution on hand to keep people interested in their products.
Paul
[1] https://www.mips.com/develop/platforms/
Since Imagination's takeover, not even the Imagination site has alternative retailer information any more, but I am guessing here that the Creator range is no longer supported by MIPS and neither the CI20 or CI40 are being sold by the nominated retailers (Mouser and RS Online, if I remember correctly). So I suppose we can consider ourselves lucky to have acquired our devices while they were still on sale.
I think it almost goes without saying that various dedicated support sites for the Creator products are also no longer available. At least, the foresight of someone at MIPS/ImgTec to put information on the eLinux wiki paid off and we can at least refer to that. As someone dabbling with the CI20, as opposed to the CI40, I guess I am also fortunate not to be relying on any cloud infrastructure that has presumably also gone offline.
The MIPS site is a bit of a placeholder, really. Various blog articles reference the Imagination site, although the article selection seems to have been filtered somewhat to feature MIPS-related topics (and similarly, ImgTec's blog has been purged of Creator articles, allowing them to focus on PowerVR once again). But it should perhaps also be noted that some of the platforms mentioned on the site may not have any MIPS connection at all, with things like Samsung Exynos being featured originally due to some PowerVR connection, I guess.
It's all a bit of a mess and rather sad, I think. I guess it's up to the maker community to make boards like these now, but one would think that MIPS might want some kind of inexpensive development board solution on hand to keep people interested in their products.
Paul
[1] https://www.mips.com/develop/platforms/
Paul Boddie
Jul 19, 2018, 2:41:15 PM7/19/18
to MIPS Creator CI20
On Sunday, July 15, 2018 at 1:31:34 AM UTC+2, Paul Boddie wrote:
Since Imagination's takeover, not even the Imagination site has alternative retailer information any more, but I am guessing here that the Creator range is no longer supported by MIPS and neither the CI20 or CI40 are being sold by the nominated retailers (Mouser and RS Online, if I remember correctly). So I suppose we can consider ourselves lucky to have acquired our devices while they were still on sale.
Well, my search on the Mouser site does now yield the product again, so maybe something wasn't working at the weekend. For reference, the product code is VL-62851. Pricing is still as it was, and I doubt that these things are exactly flying off the shelves...
Paul
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