New look XMOS

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Bianco
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Post by Bianco »

XMatt wrote:
segher wrote: I cannot find the most important document, which used to be prominently
featured, "The XS1 Architecture". I clicked all checkboxes on all "resources"
pages, no luck. And the search box gives an empty result list. Maybe I'm
just blind, dunno.
When I put your text into the search on the front page it is the first link displayed? Following that takes you to the document?
You have to be aware of the existence and name of the document in that case to find it.
Someone new to XMOS will never discover it. I also noticed that i could not find that document that segher mentions, and i agree with him that this is the most important document.


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XMatt
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Post by XMatt »

Bianco wrote:
XMatt wrote:
segher wrote: I cannot find the most important document, which used to be prominently
featured, "The XS1 Architecture". I clicked all checkboxes on all "resources"
pages, no luck. And the search box gives an empty result list. Maybe I'm
just blind, dunno.
When I put your text into the search on the front page it is the first link displayed? Following that takes you to the document?
You have to be aware of the existence and name of the document in that case to find it.
Someone new to XMOS will never discover it. I also noticed that i could not find that document that segher mentions, and i agree with him that this is the most important document.
I agree with the point that finding these documents needs to be made simpler, that is something for us to work on, i disagree slightly that you need to know the name of the document, you can for example type in "XMOS architecture" in the search and get to the document as the first link. I also agree that for yourself, segher and others this document is the most important to find for your case being experienced XMOS users, what about people who are new to XMOS and maybe dont have your knowledge of computer architectures? Not saying either position is the incorrect one, it is a useful discussion.
asibbald
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Post by asibbald »

Great work XMOS! I can no longer either send emails to support@xmos, nor can I even raise a support ticket. Here's part of the ticket I just tried to raise ( having been unable to continue an email exchange with XMOS support ). However, the site won't even let me fill in the "required fields" - so I now have no way ( apart from here on Xcore ) of contacting XMOS support ( short of phoning and asking to be put through ).

This Website seems to have been rather badly handled. Please sort it out XMOS!

Here's the relevant part of the support ticket:

Note that there are numerous issues with the current site and support system, for this reason I am having to raise this ticket. I have been UNABLE to fully complete the fields in this ticket, as the site does not allow me to click ( or tab ) into the Name/email/organisation/subject fields.

I have been in email communication with Sethu for a week or so. Since your new site launched, I have been unable to reply to him ( at support@xmos.com ) - my mails are returned with the message:
RT could not load a valid user, and RT's configuration does not allow
for the creation of a new user for your email.
asibbald
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Posts: 11
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Post by asibbald »

HAH!

I've now just tried the main Sales number listed on the XMOS website. It rings three times, then cuts me off, without answering. That'll do wonders for your sales figures.

What on earth is happening at XMOS? It looks as though it's in meltdown!
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segher
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Post by segher »

XMatt wrote:
segher wrote: I cannot find the most important document, which used to be prominently
featured, "The XS1 Architecture". I clicked all checkboxes on all "resources"
pages, no luck. And the search box gives an empty result list. Maybe I'm
just blind, dunno.
When I put your text into the search on the front page it is the first link displayed? Following that takes you to the document?
Ugh, things work a little better if I enable javascript. Unfortunately, the
search box on the front page does not work (hitting enter there goes to
the video thing).

And my main point stands: this document is nowhere to be seen on the
resources pages? Would be great if that could be fixed ("specifications",
perhaps?)
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segher
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Post by segher »

XMatt wrote:I also agree that for yourself, segher and others this document is the most important to find for your case being experienced XMOS users, what about people who are new to XMOS and maybe dont have your knowledge of computer architectures?
This document is the only document that describes the instruction set.
It is *important*. I certainly agree that you want to steer new users away
from all the stuff with sharp edges, but those things should not be completely
absent ;-)

Maybe you could just do one page that lists all the documents, like we used
to have on the site before the previous site? That worked great for me: never
have to search for anything, it's all there (or not, and then it just doesn't exist;
never have to guess).
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xmark
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Joined: Mon Apr 26, 2010 2:35 pm

Post by xmark »

asibbald wrote:Great work XMOS! I can no longer either send emails to support@xmos, nor can I even raise a support ticket. Here's part of the ticket I just tried to raise ( having been unable to continue an email exchange with XMOS support ). However, the site won't even let me fill in the "required fields" - so I now have no way ( apart from here on Xcore ) of contacting XMOS support ( short of phoning and asking to be put through ).

This Website seems to have been rather badly handled. Please sort it out XMOS!

Here's the relevant part of the support ticket:

Note that there are numerous issues with the current site and support system, for this reason I am having to raise this ticket. I have been UNABLE to fully complete the fields in this ticket, as the site does not allow me to click ( or tab ) into the Name/email/organisation/subject fields.

I have been in email communication with Sethu for a week or so. Since your new site launched, I have been unable to reply to him ( at support@xmos.com ) - my mails are returned with the message:
RT could not load a valid user, and RT's configuration does not allow
for the creation of a new user for your email.
We had some problems with RT, some of which can be traced back to the original server outage.

It should be ok now, but I note from your post that you had an issue replying to an existing ticket this afternoon. Is it possible that you are using a different email address to the one that you registered?

-Mark
Heater
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Posts: 296
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Post by Heater »

Oh my God. How hideous. That green an blue and grey colour scheme that is now on xmos.com

OK that's a question of personal taste but then we come to this:

"Imagine a microcontroller that doesn't tell you what to do, but asks "What do you want from me?""

Pure meaningless marketing drivel. Makes me want to leave immediately.

Not one mention of XMOS unique selling points anywhere on the first page. Nothing about multi-core, or hardware multi-threading, or such. Could be just a regular MCU for all I know so far.

No "Products" button. You are in business to sell stuff so where is the products button? That click should get me to "Chips", "Development Tools", "documentation", "Software IP", "data sheets" etc. You know, the companies products should be in the front window of the store.

When I do hit something like "discover" or "resources" I am blinded by "x"s, xThis and xThat, more marketing gone mad.

And then I hit a gem "xTIMEcomposer". What a name. How would I ever know that is a dev environment for an MCU. Not to mention the annoying use of upper and lower case in a name. What was wrong with XDE?

And what's with all this renaming of "threads" to "cores" or "logical cores" and renaming "cores" to "tiles". At least the former seems dishonest and smacks of more marketing drivel.

Hope you have updated all the documentation and tools and software to reflect this double speak. The XC Programming Guide refers to "thread" thousands of times. And will the xc language be changed such that:

Code: Select all

    on stdcore [0] : ...
becomes

Code: Select all

    on stdtile [0] : ...
I might get used to it all eventually, but just now I don't get the reasoning for it all.
yzoer
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Posts: 133
Joined: Tue Dec 15, 2009 10:23 pm

Post by yzoer »

Heater wrote:Hope you have updated all the documentation and tools and software to reflect this double speak. The XC Programming Guide refers to "thread" thousands of times. And will the xc language be changed such that:

Code: Select all

    on stdcore [0] : ...
becomes

Code: Select all

    on stdtile [0] : ...
I might get used to it all eventually, but just now I don't get the reasoning for it all.
That's actually a good point. While I think we might be getting a little carried away voicing our opinion (myself included!) any new developers coming to this site (www.xcore.com) will no doubt be confused as the new terms won't be reflected in any of the discussions here..

Anyway, I hope XMOS doesn't take our critique as bashing and recognizes there's valid feedback in there.

-Y
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segher
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Post by segher »

Before the New True Way, there already was a thing called "tile",
and it was more than a core: it was a core together with all its
resources, and its associated processor switch.

If "tile" still means this, then in that sense it is more correct to
say "on stdtile[0]: this-or-that port bla bla" than it was to say
"stdcore"; but it wasn't confusing at all I'd say, so is it worth
changing everything?

W.r.t "a thread is a core now": maybe we should also rename "bit"
to "byte", so we can have eight times as big memory as well!

Or you can look at it the other way: now cores are 8x as slow as
they used to be...
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