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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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8 years ago

Are Intel/Altera dropping mysupport?

Hi,

My last two service requests on the Intel/Altera site have been answer with

Thank you for filing a Service Request with Intel PSG. Please note that the support for your chosen area had been discontinued.

Visit Intel PSG forum(https://www.alteraforum.com/forum/forum.php (https://www.alteraforum.com/forum/forum.php)) to continue your experience with Intel FPGA.

Other self-help resources are available at:

Intel PSG training materials (all free) are available at

https://www.altera.com/support/training/curricula.html (https://www.altera.com/support/training/curricula.html)

Intel PSG community forum for self-help is available at

https://www.altera.com/support/support-resources/communities.html (https://www.altera.com/support/support-resources/communities.html)

Intel PSG wiki site for design examples

http://www.alterawiki.com/wiki/main_page (http://www.alterawiki.com/wiki/main_page)

Intel PSG Knowledge Base Solutions

Intel PSG License setup https://intelpedia.intel.com/altera (https://intelpedia.intel.com/altera)

Regards,

Intel PSG Support

I must admit I object to my requests being shown on a Public forum.

Is there any other place I can ask for support?

Thanks,

J

6 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    8 years ago

    What did you Ask for help with? it does say what you asked for support for is discontinued.

    Its probably just inevitable that with the Intel Takeover they will consolidate their support services. And dropping support for low use areas for customers that dont pay enough wouldnt be a surprise.

    Can you ask for support via your FAE? (although to be honest, all they do is raise mysupport tickets on your behalf, although they may have better support privileged levels)
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    8 years ago

    The last request was about what licenses were required to use Prime-Pro on Arria 10 devices. I have Arria 10 support on Prime Standard but am working through the HLS tutorials that are configured for Prime-Pro but can't configure for an Arria 10 device on a University License on Prime-pro (17.1).

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    8 years ago

    The first request was for support on an Arria 10 SOC board costing over 3,000GBP. I think the SD card they supplied was trashed.

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    8 years ago

    In terms of support from Intel, you get what you pay for. When I worked for a large five letter telecom company when we had any issue with an Intel device at all they would send over an army of FAEs and support folks to our site to resolve the issue. But of course my company bought hundreds of millions of dollars of Intel devices per year.

    Intel is not going to do the same (nor should it be expected to) for every lone Tom, ****, and Harry in a university lab that has bought one development board from some vendor (not Intel) and has a boatload of support issues. They will direct you to online self help sites (like this) or Intel/Altera self help web pages.

    By the way Xilinx behaves the exact same way. We had our Xilinx FAE on speed dial in our lab (and he had his own access badge into the building) so he could come to our lab on demand.

    If you are a noob that is lost, best to find someone in your school / organization that has been around the block already and get to know them really well.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    8 years ago

    Hi, Thanks for the replies, however I think you may be missing the point. The question was "Are Intel/Altera dropping mysupport?" i.e. I used to get support but now I don't.

    I've had a quick look on mysupport and it shows I've had 24 requests since 2003, I don't know whether you consider this excessive? I had two service requests in 2016 and I had helpful responses for both of them. The 19 before that also had helpful responses.

    My service request in June this year also had an intelligent response.

    However my last two service request have been replied in the same way.

    Perhaps the question should have been "Has Intel/Altera dropped support for Universities?"

    Whilst it may be your view that Universities don't deserve support, I would like to know if Intel/Altera have changed their support policy, specifically. are Universities now excluded from requests on Mysupport?

    Best wishes,

    J

    P.S. I'm still not clear about where Altera/Intel have their community support as there seems to be an overlap between these Forums and Rocketboards for their SoC devices.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    8 years ago

    First point to note: Altera never used to properly interact with this forum. They left it to end users to help other end users. The same with RocketBoards - it was a way they could let other people provide support without providing anything themselves, and put it at arm's length. Intel are now providing "official" support bods on this forum it seems, but I dont think they actually have control of it. None of the moderators I know of (myself included) work for altera, or have ever worked for them. I have not seen anyone from altera/intel take control of this forum. The "official" support even had posts needing approval at the start as they had so few posts, and people have complained about the quality of advice these people give. But nothing seems to be being done, so I wonder if they dont actually have admin access to the board.

    I think Intel are just consolidating all their services. Where Altera may have provided support to all in the past, Intel now appear to only to provide it to those that pay. For the right price any support can be had. This is the same for any company. There just isnt enough volume/profit in one off boards at universities. But if you buy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of chips every year, you'll get an FAE hotline.