Re:Ask HN's FPGA users: FPGA tool woes & wants?
by harnhua on Wednesday June 02, 2010 @10:26AM
(#1398003)
The IP issue is probably the top question from companies we talk to.
It may very well be the killer for this webapp, and we don't have a good technical solution at the moment. However much we encrypt, the customer's IP is going to sent to our Cloud anyway.
This reminds us of Dropbox in a way.
The non-technical "trust" factor seems to be very important here. Why would one trust a consultant or a design service company with one's IP? Because of a legally-binding contract and because of reputation / past interaction? That probably plays a big part.
Some strategies we came up with:
If users don't trust us with their most important IP, we'll ask for their not-so-important IP.
A support person probably has to meet the customer on a day-to-day basis, which would somewhat defeat the purpose of a webapp, at first.
Yes, we would be selling computing power in a sense. But we're also trying to do more to simplify working with FPGAs.
It's true that cost of parts is very important; that's why we're working on reporting chip cost and availability too. Octopart is very helpful in that respect!
It may very well be the killer for this webapp, and we don't have a good technical solution at the moment. However much we encrypt, the customer's IP is going to sent to our Cloud anyway.
This reminds us of Dropbox in a way.
The non-technical "trust" factor seems to be very important here. Why would one trust a consultant or a design service company with one's IP? Because of a legally-binding contract and because of reputation / past interaction? That probably plays a big part.
Some strategies we came up with:
If users don't trust us with their most important IP, we'll ask for their not-so-important IP.
A support person probably has to meet the customer on a day-to-day basis, which would somewhat defeat the purpose of a webapp, at first.
Yes, we would be selling computing power in a sense. But we're also trying to do more to simplify working with FPGAs.
It's true that cost of parts is very important; that's why we're working on reporting chip cost and availability too. Octopart is very helpful in that respect!
Thanks for your comments!