New look XMOS

All the latest news and announcements from XCore and XMOS.
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Gravis
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Post by Gravis »

My real question is: what was wrong with the old site?

I understand if you want to redo the color scheme and maybe reorganize a little but to completely redo everything into a very developer unfriendly site is just... bad.

At this rate, someone is going to make a secondary site.

I would be OK with this change if they made the old site accessible as well. I feel lost in the new site and it's not like I used the old site a bunch or anything, it just had clear[er] labels on where things were.


ozel
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Post by ozel »

I think the thread/logical core change is not too bad at all. When I previously described xmos chips to others, I mostly used a terms like "several threads .. with hardware support" or something similar. And often I could see the people then look even more puzzled after that. :-) "Threads" just gets everyone thinking in software, like there would be a certain library involved, esp. after mentioning the development is based on a c-like language. Logical core sounds much more like hardware based.
But still, the tile/core naming scheme should be explained in more detail on the new website.

I also think, Xmos can and should expect even their technical customers to use a browser with javascript enabled by 2012. The XC-3 board documentation btw. can be found under xKit Resources/Older Boards... not too hard.

The only thing that I find really awkward, is the term "IP" for something that is mostly distributed as open source. As others have already noted, that rebranding seems silly and marketing b*s* in my eyes.
It might even push potential customers into a thinking, that they have to pay heaps of licensing fees for those IP blocks. Just as all the other manufactures sell binary blobs named "IP".

I hope xmos reads our comments like rants about Apple stuff. It shows people actually do care, which is eventually a good thing.
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segher
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Post by segher »

ozel wrote:"Threads" just gets everyone thinking in software, like there would be a certain library involved, esp. after mentioning the development is based on a c-like language. Logical core sounds much more like hardware based.
You _do_ use software to start, stop, synchronise threads. Thank you for
pointing this out: we now can create cores in software! Woohoo!
I also think, Xmos can and should expect even their technical customers to use a browser with javascript enabled by 2012.
Some people have javascript disabled by default, only whitelisting or
manually enabling it for some pages. The majority has it on everywhere.
The majority is wrong.

But this is completely beside the point. I used the search thing only
because some of the most important documents are missing from
the normal pages; and that search thing *did* appear to work, it just
didn't show any results. On many sites such JS things just don't do
anything if you have JS disabled; that is much less confusing. Of course
there is not really any reason you would need JS for this at all; and most
of the XMOS site does in fact work fine with JS disabled.

Let me say that again: my point is that a bunch of information that was
there on the old site is not there on the new site, and that information
is *essential* for anyone who isn't a beginner.
SpacedCowboy
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Post by SpacedCowboy »

ozel wrote:The XC-3 board documentation btw. can be found under xKit Resources/Older Boards... not too hard.
I'm almost certain that 'older boards' category is new. I remember clicking on every option I had (and I thought there were only the three of them) to find the XC-3, to no avail.

So, I'm glad they fixed it. Not too hard.

Simon
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XMatt
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Post by XMatt »

segher wrote: Let me say that again: my point is that a bunch of information that was
there on the old site is not there on the new site, and that information
is *essential* for anyone who isn't a beginner.
Hi segher,

Any documents you find no longer accessible then please let us know, it was not the intention to remove any of these documents from being accessible by users and I will continue reporting your feedback to the web team. The architecture manual I already know about.

Matt
ale500
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Post by ale500 »

Documents... there were, back in August, a couple of Slicekit related documents... XPCB-054.pdf and slicekit_hardware_specification.pdf. They seem to be missing. Updated versions would also do. The new hardware specification doc is a bit too skinny, the tables are less useful.
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LyleHaze
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Post by LyleHaze »

I also think, Xmos can and should expect even their technical customers to use a browser with javascript enabled by 2012.
I fully understand that computers running AmigaOS4 are not "mainstream", and I won't argue that we are a tiny part of the "Big Picture".
But we are also the first and only (as far as I know) users to have XMOS chips built in right on the motherboard of our computers.

We don't have javascript available, and that's not likely to change this week or next.
So there's a vote for websites that don't require JavaScript, from one of your newest groups of new customers!

LyleHaze
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