Comment by ua709

I don't think AMD can say this but I think the reality is for most hobbyists this is the prevailing attitude:

"The Harsh Truth about FPGAs (You Should Avoid Them?!)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3d8uFKsJiY

a.k.a. Just use a microcontroller. And for the vast majority of hobby projects I suspect that is good advice. Low end FPGAs don't compete well with low end microcontrollers and more people know how to use microcontrollers.

Universities are fine as they can sign up for the University Program and get the licensees they used to get. https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/university-program.html

I think the reality is the niche that FPGAs occupied is getting hit hard on the high and low end. Cheap Chinese FPGAs are prevalent, cheap microcontrollers more so, and on the high-end making an ASIC that compete with a high-end FPGA has never been cheaper, and is getting cheaper and easier everyday. 65-28nm is very easy to use now (relatively speaking) and is very low cost with tons of tape outs and there is good competition. Beating an FPGA with an ASIC is not all that hard. Grad students at CMU, Stanford, Georgia Tech, etc. do it all the time in their tape-out class. Making an ASIC is not as easy as an FPGA for sure, especially if you need DDR and serdes. And NRE for ASICs for small volume ( <1K units) is higher. But it is getting easier and cheaper everyday. And it's now feasible for small teams (say ~6) to do it. I think they need to look very hard at where they spend their NRE now to stay relevant and they need to start getting brutal because I am sure the amount of revenue they're bringing in is under serious attack.

As to why Windows and not Linux? It's probably cheaper for them to maintain Windows for one reason or another. Maybe they don't even do it an just contract it out and Windows contractors are easier to find, but I'll bet it's just a basic cost issue at the end of the day.