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General discussion / Re: Plunify interview questions
May I ask, what specifically do you like about this project?
We're always trying to learn more about what people like and don't like.
Thanks!
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Messages - harnhua
May I ask, what specifically do you like about this project?
We're always trying to learn more about what people like and don't like.
Thanks!
2
General discussion / Re: Plunify interview questions
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* High end professionals ? They mostly use same tools for years and don't care about prices; work on big long projects.. I don't think they would remove themselves from the comfort of desktop apps.We have (and are asking for feedback) on a scripting interface that these users can run directly from their desktop apps to make the cloud "transparent".
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* Low end professionals ? They do electronics for bread & butter but and are small companies or work for small companies, they use all available tools and all available technologies changing toolchains from job to job, from board to board; they have no loyalty to a toolchain nor a company; will often change "partner" for a small difference in price. These might be your target.Yes, especially during "crunch time" when there is a need to quickly scale up resources.
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* High end hobbyists ? Those that do electronics as a hobby but do from time to time a commercial application. They know a lot, work on diverse projects using diverse set of tools but do stuff rarely if they don't see something "special" there. These are a mystery, I know many ppl in this "population" and they are all soooooooo different. Most of them I know still use '90s technology and don't plan to changeThis is a group of very knowledgeable users with diverse requirements. I think the boundaries between "low end professionals" and this group can be blurred. Maybe Plunify is both a convenient and a "heavy-processing helper" for such users.
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* Low end hobbyists ? They have no money or no time or not enough knowledge to spend on this hobby, some of them will move from this position in future, most will not. These are only interested in free stuff that can make them learn something, or a free stuff that they can just "reuse". You have to target this population even if they don't really have anything to offer, as those you pick here you want to "have" when they move from this "non-paying" to a "paying" population.Being a low end hobbyist myself, I am very passionate about helping out in this area if I can. The tutorial that Ian and I worked on is perhaps an example.
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if you can make the "acceptable speed" toolchain on the web that would cover "all fpga/cpld" chips out there then it might increase the fun factor as maybe altera have more "solderable" chips I can use and I don't need to get all the tools - I just use the same interface for all of them ...This gives much food for thought!
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General discussion / Re: Plunify interview questions
It sounds like integration of complementary tools and price are more of the main decision factors in your case. You have an impressive and dedicated setup (I wish I had 50GHz of CPU power under my desk!), so what you say makes sense.
I agree that currently tasks like GUI-intensive ones should not be moved to a client/server model, because of latency, for one thing.
What tools would you like to use in addition to the FPGA tools?
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General discussion / Re: Plunify interview questions
Currently we're in discussions with the FPGA vendors to license their solutions officially on the cloud. As part of those discussions, we were required to take some features off for the time being, which is unfortunate because users tell us they like a lot of the features. Of course there are areas we can improve on as well.
One thing I'd like to clarify is that this is not meant to be just "a web interface", but also a way to automatically scale up your compilation resources - servers and licenses, so one can run the backend processes like synthesis, map, par, etc. more quickly.
Please let us know what you like or don't like about this service so we can also convey your opinions to the vendors!