An Interview with Clint Cole of Digilent

The Amp Hour · 10 Jun 2016 · 1h 46m · Episode 302

What this episode covers

Chris Cole, founder and president of Digilent, recounts the company's journey from a university side-project to an acquisition by National Instruments (NI). He details the bootstrapped origins, the strategic decision to maintain low margins to serve the educational market, and the eventual sale to NI to secure long-term stability. The conversation covers Digilent's product evolution, including FPGA boards, the Analog Discovery, and the upcoming OpenScope, as well as the company's open-source philosophy and the challenges of scaling hardware education.

Mentioned

Companies
Digilent, National Instruments, Xilinx, TerASIC, XESS, Rigol
Products
Analog Discovery, OpenScope, Arduino, Cerebot
Chips
PIC32
Tools
LabVIEW

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