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I don't think that even with accessible tools there is going to be hundreds of times more users. At the end of the day, they are niche products with niche uses.

I don't think that even with accessible tools there is going to be hundreds of times more users. At the end of the day, they are niche products with niche uses. The average random person isn't going out of their way to make accelerators or some kind of pipeline tool or circuit to do something random that couldn't just easily be achieved with a micro controller or Arduino. Those that are willing to go out of their way to design a custom circuit or something else on an FPGA are in my opinion the type already dedicated enough or driven enough to not be deterred by crappy tools. The work you do on FPGAs is already a filter enough so that I don't think anyone is getting passed that and then giving up because the tools suck.

UncleOxidant 3y ago
> The work you do on FPGAs is already a filter enough so that I don't think anyone is getting passed that and then giving up because the tools suck. About 10 years ago I was doing some FPGA development in a startup. We were using Vivado. It seemed like we spent about 30% of our time working around Vivado bugs. I come from a hardware background originally and then got into software development (EDA tools) later on. After the startup gig ended I could've gone more in the direction of FPGA development. I decided not to because the tools suck and life is too short to deal with that day in and day out. And it's not simply that the FPGA vendor tools are some of the buggiest software known to humankind, it's that the FPGA vendors don't care to make them better.
nerpderp82 3y ago
I think you are looking at it from the wrong perspective. It doesn't take 100x the devs to make FPGA compelling on the desktop or the server. Just like bespoke accelerators in Apple Silicon are used behind a library, so too will the accelerators implemented via FPGAs. The program itself can be copied a billion times. Your argument can be made for GPUs as well, the users (end users) aren't the ones writing the shaders, but GPUs are used my hundreds of millions of people.
JoshTriplett 3y ago
You don't need a massive number of developers. You need a small number of developers contributing changes to popular libraries that are used by a huge number of people.

UncleOxidant 3y ago

> The work you do on FPGAs is already a filter enough so that I don't think anyone is getting passed that and then giving up because the tools suck. About 10 years ago I was doing some FPGA development in a startup. We were using Vivado. It seemed like we spent about 30% of our time working around Vivado bugs. I come from a hardware background originally and then got into software development (EDA tools) later on. After the startup gig ended I could've gone more in the direction of FPGA development. I decided not to because the tools suck and life is too short to deal with that day in and day out. And it's not simply that the FPGA vendor tools are some of the buggiest software known to humankind, it's that the FPGA vendors don't care to make them better.

nerpderp82 3y ago

I think you are looking at it from the wrong perspective. It doesn't take 100x the devs to make FPGA compelling on the desktop or the server. Just like bespoke accelerators in Apple Silicon are used behind a library, so too will the accelerators implemented via FPGAs. The program itself can be copied a billion times. Your argument can be made for GPUs as well, the users (end users) aren't the ones writing the shaders, but GPUs are used my hundreds of millions of people.

JoshTriplett 3y ago

You don't need a massive number of developers. You need a small number of developers contributing changes to popular libraries that are used by a huge number of people.