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The official replies are addressing questions that nobody has asked. The main issue is why Linux support is being removed from the Basic tier while Windows is s

The official replies are addressing questions that nobody has asked. The main issue is why Linux support is being removed from the Basic tier while Windows is still allowed. To grow the ecosystem, AMD needs more people working on their hardware. Restricting Linux will only alienates students, hobbyists, and devs who want to adopt AMD tech. - From long term AMD user

izacus 4mo ago
[flagged]
- adrian_b 4mo ago
  What you say is ridiculous. The only reason why the "Linux community" cannot create adequate FPGA design tools is that the vendors like AMD refuse to document the necessary details of their products. A few old AMD FPGAs have been reversed engineered, e.g. some ARTIX-7, so for them there is no need for the rather bad AMD tools, but for most AMD formerly Xilinx FPGAs it is impossible to create better tools for lack of documentation. As long as AMD refuses to provide the technical documentation required to use their products, it should have been a legal obligation to at least provide basic tools that allows the buyer of such products to actually use "FPGAs", i.e. to "field-program" them, as the name of the sold product claims. Like many other FPGA developers, I could write myself better FPGA development tools than what AMD provides, if I had access to the complete FPGA technical documentation to which only a few big companies have access, a restriction whose only possible purpose is to prevent competition in the FPGA market. If AMD had documented the exact format of the bit stream required to program each model of their FPGAs and the complete timing consequences of each synthesis choice, nobody would need any FPGA simulation or synthesis tool provided by AMD in Vivado.
  - izacus 4mo ago
    [flagged]
  - charcircuit 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    - Dylan16807 4mo ago
      No, it's not "on the Linux community" to bribe a company out of releasing hardware in a broken state of usability.
      - charcircuit 4mo ago
        It's no more a bribe than having to pay money to buy the latest C++ standard when implementing a C++ compiler. The reality is that companies pay each other for partnerships all of the time. There is value to AMD for keeping this documentation secret and there is value for having control over what design tools exist for them. It makes sense that AMD would want to be compensated in this case and would not want to do work for free which could undermine their business. The hardware is not in a broken state of usability since you can still buy usable design software.
        Dylan16807 4mo ago
        > It's no more a bribe than having to pay money to buy the latest C++ standard when implementing a C++ compiler. The C++ standard group didn't just sell me a piece of hardware that only runs C++, in a world where no free C++ compilers exist. That analogy isn't even close. > There is value to AMD for keeping this documentation secret It's a value that doesn't deserve respect. > It makes sense that AMD would want to be compensated in this case and would not want to do work for free which could undermine their business. Their business is selling the hardware. Their money should come from selling the hardware. I'm not demanding a free full-featured development environment. I think they should have to document the hardware and maybe provide a basic compiler. If they want to sell something beyond that, no problem. > The hardware is not in a broken state of usability since you can still buy usable design software. And if you don't? It's a fixable broken state with enough money, but it's still a broken state.
        4mo ago
  - pocksuppet 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    - lukan 4mo ago
      Because most don't want to work on something big, with a high risk of being sued into oblivion once released?
      - pocksuppet 4mo ago
        It's a pretty low risk if you don't put your identity out there. I know there's at least one Git forge that's a Tor onion service. Even on GitHub 99% of the time this ends with a DMCA takedown of the repository. You should probably put it on a pseudonymous alt account but you don't actually need to use a Tor onion service. You could also get someone else to put their name on the web hosting and so on. Don't know who exactly, but there are a lot more people willing to take legal risk of having reverse-engineered an FPGA toolchain, than people who can reverse-engineer an FPGA toolchain. Doing the work is what's most important, and the rest can be figured out later. But you don't even see that. You don't see people being like "I reverse-engineered Vivado but I won't give you a copy because I could get sued."
        lukan 4mo ago
        "Doing the work is what's most important, and the rest can be figured out later." I would say for most people his means they won't start the work if they don't know whether there is a way. Also most people like to get credit for their work. So the number of people capable AND willing to work without getting credit is low. And that is not surprising to me. It is not my skill set, but I certainly would not invest much into something like this.
        rescbr 4mo ago
        > You don't see people being like "I reverse-engineered Vivado but I won't give you a copy because I could get sued." Eh, not Vivado, but back in my undergrad days I RE/cracked a tool used in a very specific niche and definitely kept my mouth shut as the developers could a) do some investigation and then sue me, a student without any legal budget to spare; b) improve copy protection on future releases; and/or c) prevent my access to future versions of the tool that I was using for my thesis. On other threads about Denuvo you always see somebody saying they've got the chops but the risk to their livelihoods is not worth it. I think there are a lot of (now) hobbyist reverse-engineers that learned the craft back in the day and kept the knowledge for themselves.
- tux3 4mo ago
  Vivado already supports Linux, the development is supported by very large customers that put FPGAs in cars, [REDACTED], and other kinds of objects that crash into other objects. This is just hurting students and hobbyists.
  - atq2119 4mo ago
    And, since there's a pipeline from students and hobbyists to professional use, it's risking the future.
    - tardedmeme 4mo ago
      AMD has been unable to not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory for ages. I'd almost say someone high up is getting kickbacks from their competitors.
  - ua709 4mo ago
    Schools can join the AMD University Program and get back to where they were, and more. https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/university-program.html https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/university-program.html As for hobbyists, in the world of $0.03 microcontrollers, strong competition on the low end from Chinese manufacturers, and where few people learn HDLs, is NRE money in the hobby market really money well spent? I'm a HW designer and even I use microcontrollers now for most things, but not everything, because it's usually cheaper and faster. With semiconductor prices coming down as far as they have I think the world has probably fundamentally changed for FPGAs and the niche they occupied is shrinking fast.
  - jeltz 4mo ago
    And hurting AMD.
- izacus 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - pyrale 4mo ago
    More like the notion of seeing different treatment between OSes. No one likes being punished for a choice that shouldn't be any of the selling party's business. That's especially true in the Linux community, which was the target of Microsoft's anticompetitive policies for decades. That's just like when macOS users got mad when they learned they were targeted by marketing schemes to sell them more expensive stuff [1]. [1]: https://www.npr.org/2012/06/26/155792590/orbitz-targets-mac-users-for-pricier-hotels https://www.npr.org/2012/06/26/155792590/orbitz-targets-mac-...
    - izacus 4mo ago
      Maintaining software on Linux just takes more time and effort - due to less stability and number of distros.
      - pqtyw 4mo ago
        AMD is making more than enough money from hardware sales to fund the software that actually makes is usable. Even Apple doesn't charge you for the software needed to actually be able to use their devices (well since around Snow Leopard or so, at least). But I suppose the idea of not being as greedy as possible really "pisses off" AMD's executives (and presumably some of the people shilling for them here). And presumably you didn't read the article since AMD will continue to support this on Linux anyway.
      - pyrale 4mo ago
        AMD does maintain Linux anyway, for their paid tiers. It's not like they're saving money by dumping the free tier for Linux.
  - robinsonb5 4mo ago
    The notion of being expected to pay for software that was formerly free - when Windows users aren't expected to bear those same costs - does indeed piss me off. If I were actually using Xilinx FPGAs I'd be more pissed off. Luckily the projects that interest me currently are based around Intel, Lattice and Gowin devices.
- matheusmoreira 4mo ago
  Nah. Why do Windows users get it for free while I have to pay because I'm an "advanced" user? I'm not rewarding that. I'll reward companies like Valve instead.
- pjc50 4mo ago
  This tier of the tool is free on Windows. It might be a fair criticism that Linux users don't pay for software, but being a dick about it isn't going to get you anywhere. (It's weird to see people on HN shilling for AMD against Linux, though. Very astroturf flavored)
mort96 4mo ago
The official replies started off by addressing ... the "unacceptable abusive behavior towards AMD". The most important thing here is obviously to ask people not to use such hurtful words as "disgraceful" towards poor little AMD... Answering the actual question seems not a high priority
- musicale 4mo ago
  You answer all the questions we do not ask. Please answer the primary question this issue is about. Why is Linux not supported in the BASIC tier? seems about right
- adrian_b 4mo ago
  Some people, including the management of most big corporations, claim that verbal insults, which do no actual physical harm to anyone, are "unacceptable abusive behavior", while the actions that do physical harm to others, e.g. by tricking or forcing them to pay an extra part of their hard-earned money for things that should not have been paid, because they had already been paid in another form, instead of using that money for worthy purposes, are not "unacceptable abusive behavior". Obviously, I believe that a decision like that made by AMD now is a much more "unacceptable abusive behavior" than any kind of verbal insult ever known to mankind. This kind of decision is a masked price rise of the AMD FPGAs that applies only to small businesses and individuals, while the big quasi-monopolistic companies are not affected, which will make competing with them even more difficult. What annoys me most about this kind of policies aimed to hurt small businesses and individuals and favor big companies, which have become more and more frequent, is that in most cases they do not provide any financial benefit whatsoever to the company that enacts them, because they limit competition not in the market where that company activates, but in related markets. However such policies are very beneficial for the entire class of people who are major shareholders, board members or executives in big companies, by ensuring that all markets are eventually dominated by few, which has happened especially after the end of the nineties of the past century, resulting in the current unhealthy economies of the Western countries and especially of USA. This success of the quasi-monopolies has been caused by the lack of truly adequate consumer protection laws.
t_mahmood 4mo ago
When they do not have any justifiable answer, or don't want to answer, but need to keep the facade on, they'll sidestep and tell you how hard they are working on something, and how many unrelated things they've archived. - A regular tactic used by our former autocratic ruler, or most corrupted people
alphabeta3r56 4mo ago
Yeah this is such an own goal. You want students using your code to get them to use it in job. They have learnt nothing from cuda
- jeroenhd 4mo ago
  They still have a system for sponsoring students (through professors). They're not entirely crazy. It does make me wonder how much money they must be losing on these chips that they've turned this desperate for licensing costs.
  - chaostheory 4mo ago
    Yes, but that’s resistance for potential users they can’t afford if they ever want adoption on the level of CUDA.
  - throwaway85825 4mo ago
    Usually it's just some idiot manager trying to juice quarterly numbers and get promoted. Then they jump to another company and the damage takes years to kick in.
  - musicale 4mo ago
    They have learnt... very slightly more than nothing from CUDA.
DoctorOW 4mo ago
> For your specific question: Why is Linux not supported in the BASIC tier? > This is AMD's marketing decision. > Kind Regards, > Anatoli Curran, > Xilinx/AMD Forum Moderator I mean, nobody in that forum necessarily knows why. It just came from above.
- cfinnberg 4mo ago
  I think many haven't read that part, as it is hidden by default and one have to expand the answer to see it. At least that was what happened to me... I didn't noticed it until you pointed it out.
nubinetwork 4mo ago
But amd doesn't need you, all they care about is ai. https://youtu.be/uJcf2UGCH1w https://youtu.be/uJcf2UGCH1w
petterroea 4mo ago
One would've thought they had learned from their supposed driver superiority over Nvidia due to embracing Linux users with OSS drivers
- tliltocatl 4mo ago
  I guess FPGA division (nee Xilinx, which was always a bit sketchy, even if they had best silicon) doesn't learn much from the GPU division.
bigfatkitten 4mo ago
Those students and hobbyists often end up in jobs where they are involved in multi million dollar purchasing decisions. AMD’s MBA types extinguish that early mindshare at their own peril.
- folbec 4mo ago
  MBAs are mercenaries, that's part of their formation. They fully expect to be working somewhere else when things start looking bad. They are just doing what mercenaries have been doing for millennia : cost a lot in peace time, loot the population, and run away or cut a deal with the invader when the goings get though. A good example is the Russian "Africa Corp" in Mali. Expensive, atrocities against the population and cut a deal with the jihadist to run away when they came last month.
ua709 4mo ago
I don't think AMD can say this but I think the reality is for most hobbyists this is the prevailing attitude: "The Harsh Truth about FPGAs (You Should Avoid Them?!)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3d8uFKsJiY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3d8uFKsJiY a.k.a. Just use a microcontroller. And for the vast majority of hobby projects I suspect that is good advice. Low end FPGAs don't compete well with low end microcontrollers and more people know how to use microcontrollers. Universities are fine as they can sign up for the University Program and get the licensees they used to get. https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/university-program.html https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/university-program.html I think the reality is the niche that FPGAs occupied is getting hit hard on the high and low end. Cheap Chinese FPGAs are prevalent, cheap microcontrollers more so, and on the high-end making an ASIC that compete with a high-end FPGA has never been cheaper, and is getting cheaper and easier everyday. 65-28nm is very easy to use now (relatively speaking) and is very low cost with tons of tape outs and there is good competition. Beating an FPGA with an ASIC is not all that hard. Grad students at CMU, Stanford, Georgia Tech, etc. do it all the time in their tape-out class. Making an ASIC is not as easy as an FPGA for sure, especially if you need DDR and serdes. And NRE for ASICs for small volume ( <1K units) is higher. But it is getting easier and cheaper everyday. And it's now feasible for small teams (say ~6) to do it. I think they need to look very hard at where they spend their NRE now to stay relevant and they need to start getting brutal because I am sure the amount of revenue they're bringing in is under serious attack. As to why Windows and not Linux? It's probably cheaper for them to maintain Windows for one reason or another. Maybe they don't even do it an just contract it out and Windows contractors are easier to find, but I'll bet it's just a basic cost issue at the end of the day.
- lpribis 4mo ago
  Are you seriously suggesting hobbyists should tapeout an ASIC instead of use an FPGA? 1. For one-off designs (quantity=1) ASICs will never beat a high end FPGA on unit price. 2. As a hobbyist, you want to EXPERIMENT. You cannot do that with an ASIC. Hobbyists want to do something simple, test it on real hardware, and slowly build up from that. I don't have the time nor expertise nor motivation to spend months writing verification to get it right the first time for a tapeout. "Just use a microcontroller"... I will concede that microcontrollers do cover 90% of hobbyists use cases (that number increasing by the day). But for hobbyists sometimes you want to learn HDL or digital logic or computer engineering. You can do this hands on with a FPGA much more effectively than in software. > It's probably cheaper for them to maintain Windows for one reason or another. They already need to maintain the Linux build for all the other paid tiers?? These are the same software with different features locked behind a license key. It costs them NOTHING to keep the build enabled for free tier.

izacus 4mo ago

[flagged]

adrian_b 4mo ago
What you say is ridiculous. The only reason why the "Linux community" cannot create adequate FPGA design tools is that the vendors like AMD refuse to document the necessary details of their products. A few old AMD FPGAs have been reversed engineered, e.g. some ARTIX-7, so for them there is no need for the rather bad AMD tools, but for most AMD formerly Xilinx FPGAs it is impossible to create better tools for lack of documentation. As long as AMD refuses to provide the technical documentation required to use their products, it should have been a legal obligation to at least provide basic tools that allows the buyer of such products to actually use "FPGAs", i.e. to "field-program" them, as the name of the sold product claims. Like many other FPGA developers, I could write myself better FPGA development tools than what AMD provides, if I had access to the complete FPGA technical documentation to which only a few big companies have access, a restriction whose only possible purpose is to prevent competition in the FPGA market. If AMD had documented the exact format of the bit stream required to program each model of their FPGAs and the complete timing consequences of each synthesis choice, nobody would need any FPGA simulation or synthesis tool provided by AMD in Vivado.
- izacus 4mo ago
  [flagged]
- charcircuit 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - Dylan16807 4mo ago
    No, it's not "on the Linux community" to bribe a company out of releasing hardware in a broken state of usability.
    - charcircuit 4mo ago
      It's no more a bribe than having to pay money to buy the latest C++ standard when implementing a C++ compiler. The reality is that companies pay each other for partnerships all of the time. There is value to AMD for keeping this documentation secret and there is value for having control over what design tools exist for them. It makes sense that AMD would want to be compensated in this case and would not want to do work for free which could undermine their business. The hardware is not in a broken state of usability since you can still buy usable design software.
      - Dylan16807 4mo ago
        > It's no more a bribe than having to pay money to buy the latest C++ standard when implementing a C++ compiler. The C++ standard group didn't just sell me a piece of hardware that only runs C++, in a world where no free C++ compilers exist. That analogy isn't even close. > There is value to AMD for keeping this documentation secret It's a value that doesn't deserve respect. > It makes sense that AMD would want to be compensated in this case and would not want to do work for free which could undermine their business. Their business is selling the hardware. Their money should come from selling the hardware. I'm not demanding a free full-featured development environment. I think they should have to document the hardware and maybe provide a basic compiler. If they want to sell something beyond that, no problem. > The hardware is not in a broken state of usability since you can still buy usable design software. And if you don't? It's a fixable broken state with enough money, but it's still a broken state.
        4mo ago
- pocksuppet 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - lukan 4mo ago
    Because most don't want to work on something big, with a high risk of being sued into oblivion once released?
    - pocksuppet 4mo ago
      It's a pretty low risk if you don't put your identity out there. I know there's at least one Git forge that's a Tor onion service. Even on GitHub 99% of the time this ends with a DMCA takedown of the repository. You should probably put it on a pseudonymous alt account but you don't actually need to use a Tor onion service. You could also get someone else to put their name on the web hosting and so on. Don't know who exactly, but there are a lot more people willing to take legal risk of having reverse-engineered an FPGA toolchain, than people who can reverse-engineer an FPGA toolchain. Doing the work is what's most important, and the rest can be figured out later. But you don't even see that. You don't see people being like "I reverse-engineered Vivado but I won't give you a copy because I could get sued."
      - lukan 4mo ago
        "Doing the work is what's most important, and the rest can be figured out later." I would say for most people his means they won't start the work if they don't know whether there is a way. Also most people like to get credit for their work. So the number of people capable AND willing to work without getting credit is low. And that is not surprising to me. It is not my skill set, but I certainly would not invest much into something like this.
      - rescbr 4mo ago
        > You don't see people being like "I reverse-engineered Vivado but I won't give you a copy because I could get sued." Eh, not Vivado, but back in my undergrad days I RE/cracked a tool used in a very specific niche and definitely kept my mouth shut as the developers could a) do some investigation and then sue me, a student without any legal budget to spare; b) improve copy protection on future releases; and/or c) prevent my access to future versions of the tool that I was using for my thesis. On other threads about Denuvo you always see somebody saying they've got the chops but the risk to their livelihoods is not worth it. I think there are a lot of (now) hobbyist reverse-engineers that learned the craft back in the day and kept the knowledge for themselves.
tux3 4mo ago
Vivado already supports Linux, the development is supported by very large customers that put FPGAs in cars, [REDACTED], and other kinds of objects that crash into other objects. This is just hurting students and hobbyists.
- atq2119 4mo ago
  And, since there's a pipeline from students and hobbyists to professional use, it's risking the future.
  - tardedmeme 4mo ago
    AMD has been unable to not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory for ages. I'd almost say someone high up is getting kickbacks from their competitors.
- ua709 4mo ago
  Schools can join the AMD University Program and get back to where they were, and more. https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/university-program.html https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/university-program.html As for hobbyists, in the world of $0.03 microcontrollers, strong competition on the low end from Chinese manufacturers, and where few people learn HDLs, is NRE money in the hobby market really money well spent? I'm a HW designer and even I use microcontrollers now for most things, but not everything, because it's usually cheaper and faster. With semiconductor prices coming down as far as they have I think the world has probably fundamentally changed for FPGAs and the niche they occupied is shrinking fast.
- jeltz 4mo ago
  And hurting AMD.
izacus 4mo ago
[flagged]
- pyrale 4mo ago
  More like the notion of seeing different treatment between OSes. No one likes being punished for a choice that shouldn't be any of the selling party's business. That's especially true in the Linux community, which was the target of Microsoft's anticompetitive policies for decades. That's just like when macOS users got mad when they learned they were targeted by marketing schemes to sell them more expensive stuff [1]. [1]: https://www.npr.org/2012/06/26/155792590/orbitz-targets-mac-users-for-pricier-hotels https://www.npr.org/2012/06/26/155792590/orbitz-targets-mac-...
  - izacus 4mo ago
    Maintaining software on Linux just takes more time and effort - due to less stability and number of distros.
    - pqtyw 4mo ago
      AMD is making more than enough money from hardware sales to fund the software that actually makes is usable. Even Apple doesn't charge you for the software needed to actually be able to use their devices (well since around Snow Leopard or so, at least). But I suppose the idea of not being as greedy as possible really "pisses off" AMD's executives (and presumably some of the people shilling for them here). And presumably you didn't read the article since AMD will continue to support this on Linux anyway.
    - pyrale 4mo ago
      AMD does maintain Linux anyway, for their paid tiers. It's not like they're saving money by dumping the free tier for Linux.
- robinsonb5 4mo ago
  The notion of being expected to pay for software that was formerly free - when Windows users aren't expected to bear those same costs - does indeed piss me off. If I were actually using Xilinx FPGAs I'd be more pissed off. Luckily the projects that interest me currently are based around Intel, Lattice and Gowin devices.
matheusmoreira 4mo ago
Nah. Why do Windows users get it for free while I have to pay because I'm an "advanced" user? I'm not rewarding that. I'll reward companies like Valve instead.
pjc50 4mo ago
This tier of the tool is free on Windows. It might be a fair criticism that Linux users don't pay for software, but being a dick about it isn't going to get you anywhere. (It's weird to see people on HN shilling for AMD against Linux, though. Very astroturf flavored)

mort96 4mo ago

The official replies started off by addressing ... the "unacceptable abusive behavior towards AMD". The most important thing here is obviously to ask people not to use such hurtful words as "disgraceful" towards poor little AMD... Answering the actual question seems not a high priority

musicale 4mo ago
You answer all the questions we do not ask. Please answer the primary question this issue is about. Why is Linux not supported in the BASIC tier? seems about right
adrian_b 4mo ago
Some people, including the management of most big corporations, claim that verbal insults, which do no actual physical harm to anyone, are "unacceptable abusive behavior", while the actions that do physical harm to others, e.g. by tricking or forcing them to pay an extra part of their hard-earned money for things that should not have been paid, because they had already been paid in another form, instead of using that money for worthy purposes, are not "unacceptable abusive behavior". Obviously, I believe that a decision like that made by AMD now is a much more "unacceptable abusive behavior" than any kind of verbal insult ever known to mankind. This kind of decision is a masked price rise of the AMD FPGAs that applies only to small businesses and individuals, while the big quasi-monopolistic companies are not affected, which will make competing with them even more difficult. What annoys me most about this kind of policies aimed to hurt small businesses and individuals and favor big companies, which have become more and more frequent, is that in most cases they do not provide any financial benefit whatsoever to the company that enacts them, because they limit competition not in the market where that company activates, but in related markets. However such policies are very beneficial for the entire class of people who are major shareholders, board members or executives in big companies, by ensuring that all markets are eventually dominated by few, which has happened especially after the end of the nineties of the past century, resulting in the current unhealthy economies of the Western countries and especially of USA. This success of the quasi-monopolies has been caused by the lack of truly adequate consumer protection laws.

t_mahmood 4mo ago

When they do not have any justifiable answer, or don't want to answer, but need to keep the facade on, they'll sidestep and tell you how hard they are working on something, and how many unrelated things they've archived. - A regular tactic used by our former autocratic ruler, or most corrupted people

alphabeta3r56 4mo ago

Yeah this is such an own goal. You want students using your code to get them to use it in job. They have learnt nothing from cuda

jeroenhd 4mo ago
They still have a system for sponsoring students (through professors). They're not entirely crazy. It does make me wonder how much money they must be losing on these chips that they've turned this desperate for licensing costs.
- chaostheory 4mo ago
  Yes, but that’s resistance for potential users they can’t afford if they ever want adoption on the level of CUDA.
- throwaway85825 4mo ago
  Usually it's just some idiot manager trying to juice quarterly numbers and get promoted. Then they jump to another company and the damage takes years to kick in.
- musicale 4mo ago
  They have learnt... very slightly more than nothing from CUDA.

DoctorOW 4mo ago

> For your specific question: Why is Linux not supported in the BASIC tier? > This is AMD's marketing decision. > Kind Regards, > Anatoli Curran, > Xilinx/AMD Forum Moderator I mean, nobody in that forum necessarily knows why. It just came from above.

cfinnberg 4mo ago
I think many haven't read that part, as it is hidden by default and one have to expand the answer to see it. At least that was what happened to me... I didn't noticed it until you pointed it out.

nubinetwork 4mo ago

But amd doesn't need you, all they care about is ai. https://youtu.be/uJcf2UGCH1w https://youtu.be/uJcf2UGCH1w

petterroea 4mo ago

One would've thought they had learned from their supposed driver superiority over Nvidia due to embracing Linux users with OSS drivers

tliltocatl 4mo ago
I guess FPGA division (nee Xilinx, which was always a bit sketchy, even if they had best silicon) doesn't learn much from the GPU division.

bigfatkitten 4mo ago

Those students and hobbyists often end up in jobs where they are involved in multi million dollar purchasing decisions. AMD’s MBA types extinguish that early mindshare at their own peril.

folbec 4mo ago
MBAs are mercenaries, that's part of their formation. They fully expect to be working somewhere else when things start looking bad. They are just doing what mercenaries have been doing for millennia : cost a lot in peace time, loot the population, and run away or cut a deal with the invader when the goings get though. A good example is the Russian "Africa Corp" in Mali. Expensive, atrocities against the population and cut a deal with the jihadist to run away when they came last month.

ua709 4mo ago

I don't think AMD can say this but I think the reality is for most hobbyists this is the prevailing attitude: "The Harsh Truth about FPGAs (You Should Avoid Them?!)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3d8uFKsJiY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3d8uFKsJiY a.k.a. Just use a microcontroller. And for the vast majority of hobby projects I suspect that is good advice. Low end FPGAs don't compete well with low end microcontrollers and more people know how to use microcontrollers. Universities are fine as they can sign up for the University Program and get the licensees they used to get. https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/university-program.html https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/university-program.html I think the reality is the niche that FPGAs occupied is getting hit hard on the high and low end. Cheap Chinese FPGAs are prevalent, cheap microcontrollers more so, and on the high-end making an ASIC that compete with a high-end FPGA has never been cheaper, and is getting cheaper and easier everyday. 65-28nm is very easy to use now (relatively speaking) and is very low cost with tons of tape outs and there is good competition. Beating an FPGA with an ASIC is not all that hard. Grad students at CMU, Stanford, Georgia Tech, etc. do it all the time in their tape-out class. Making an ASIC is not as easy as an FPGA for sure, especially if you need DDR and serdes. And NRE for ASICs for small volume ( <1K units) is higher. But it is getting easier and cheaper everyday. And it's now feasible for small teams (say ~6) to do it. I think they need to look very hard at where they spend their NRE now to stay relevant and they need to start getting brutal because I am sure the amount of revenue they're bringing in is under serious attack. As to why Windows and not Linux? It's probably cheaper for them to maintain Windows for one reason or another. Maybe they don't even do it an just contract it out and Windows contractors are easier to find, but I'll bet it's just a basic cost issue at the end of the day.

lpribis 4mo ago
Are you seriously suggesting hobbyists should tapeout an ASIC instead of use an FPGA? 1. For one-off designs (quantity=1) ASICs will never beat a high end FPGA on unit price. 2. As a hobbyist, you want to EXPERIMENT. You cannot do that with an ASIC. Hobbyists want to do something simple, test it on real hardware, and slowly build up from that. I don't have the time nor expertise nor motivation to spend months writing verification to get it right the first time for a tapeout. "Just use a microcontroller"... I will concede that microcontrollers do cover 90% of hobbyists use cases (that number increasing by the day). But for hobbyists sometimes you want to learn HDL or digital logic or computer engineering. You can do this hands on with a FPGA much more effectively than in software. > It's probably cheaper for them to maintain Windows for one reason or another. They already need to maintain the Linux build for all the other paid tiers?? These are the same software with different features locked behind a license key. It costs them NOTHING to keep the build enabled for free tier.