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XMOS

Coordinates: 51°27′19.0″N 2°35′33.3″W / 51.455278°N 2.592583°W / 51.455278; -2.592583
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XMOS Limited
Company typePrivate
IndustrySemiconductors
FoundedJuly 2005, Bristol, UK
Headquarters
Bristol
,
United Kingdom
ProductsVoice controllers, Multicore microcontrollers, xCore, xCORE-200, xCORE-AUDIO, xTIMEcomposer
BrandsxCORE
Websitehttp://www.xmos.com/

XMOS is a fabless semiconductor company that develops voice products, audio products, and multicore microcontrollers capable of concurrently executing real-time tasks, DSP, and control flow. XMOS micro controllers are distinguished by their deterministic (predictable) behavior.

Company history

XMOS was founded in July 2005 by Ali Dixon (then final-year student at the University of Bristol), James Foster (former CEO of Oxford Semiconductor), Noel Hurley, David May (former chief architect of Inmos), and Hitesh Mehta (Acacia Capital Partners). It received seed funding from the University of Bristol enterprise fund, and Wyvern seed fund (formerly the Sulis Seedcorn fund).

The name XMOS is a loose reference to Inmos. Some concepts found in XMOS technology (such as channels and threads) are part of the Transputer legacy.

In the autumn of 2006, XMOS secured funding from Amadeus Capital Partners, DFJ Esprit, and Foundation Capital.[1] It also has strategic investors Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH, Huawei Technologies, and Xilinx Inc.

XMOS' processor technology is general-purpose and has been exploited in a range of different markets, including voice,[2] microphone arrays,[3] audio,[4] LED tiles,[5] communications, and robotics.[6] This enables third parties to establish products and businesses based around the technology.

In December 2009, XMOS launched a community website, the XCore Exchange as a site to enable and encourage innovative and entrepreneurial discussion and collaboration.

In July 2017, XMOS acquired SETEM,[7][8] a company that specialises in audio algorithms for source separation.

Products

XMOS has developed families of silicon devices and software based on xCORE technology:

  • xCORE-VOICE - Launched in July 2017.[9] xCORE-VOICE processors are a combination of one or more xCORE-200 processors with software that enables capture of multiple microphone signals, and aggregate those into a single signal.
  • xCORE-200 - Released in March 2015.[10] xCORE-200 devices can execute dual-issue code at 500 MHz, have up to four tiles, with each tile executing up to eight concurrent tasks. The devices are packaged with options for embedded flash, embedded USB PHY, and an embedded RGMII interface.
  • xCORE-AUDIO - Released in April 2016.[11] xCORE-AUDIO are audio-specific processors built on xCORE-200 technology, aimed at high-resolution consumer audio and multichannel professional audio applications.
  • xCORE XS1-L - Released from 2008. The first family of multicore microcontrollers, with up to two tiles executing at up to 500 MHz. There are options for embedded USB (XCore XS1-SU), ADCs (XCore XS1-AnA), DC-DC converters, or an integrated ARM Cortex-M3.[12]

XMOS coined the term Software Defined Silicon to describe hardware devices that can be programmed to implement low level I/O protocols. XMOS describes its processors as event-driven.

xCORE multicore microcontrollers

xCORE multicore microcontrollers comprise one or more processor tiles connected by a high-speed switch. Each processor tile is a conventional RISC processor that can execute a up to eight tasks concurrently. Tasks can communicate with each other over channels (that can connect to tasks on the local tile, or to tasks on remote tiles), or using memory (within a tile only).

The xCORE architecture delivers, in hardware, many of the elements that are usually seen in a real-time operating system (RTOS). This includes the task scheduler, timers, I/O operations, and channel communication. By eliminating sources of timing uncertainty (interrupts, caches, buses and other shared resources), xCORE can provide deterministic and predictable performance for many applications. A task can typically respond in nanoseconds to events such as external I/O or timers. This makes it possible to program xCORE devices to perform hard real-time tasks that would otherwise require dedicated hardware.

xCORE devices have been used in a range of different markets, including USB Audio, AVB and Time-Sensitive Networking, industrial communications, and robotics.

Programming xCORE multicore microcontrollers

xCORE devices can be programmed using C, C++, xC or native assembler. To help programmers access the real-time hardware features of xCORE devices some multicore language extensions for C have been added. These extensions form a programming language called xC which contains features for task based parallelism and communication, accurate timing and I/O, and safe memory management.

A tool-chain, xTIMEcomposer, come with LLVM-based compilers for C, C++ and xC, cycle-accurate simulator, symbolic debugger, runtime instrumentation and trace libraries (xSCOPE) and a static code timing analyzer (XTA). All of the components are aware of the real-time multicore nature of the programs, giving a fully integrated approach.

Digital audio

XMOS multicore microcontrollers are used extensively by multinational companies such as Audio Partnership, Cambridge Audio, Meridian Audio, Native Instruments, Oppo Digital, Sennheiser and Sony[13] to implement USB Audio 2.0 interfaces in their products.

In December 2014, AVnu Alliance, the industry consortium driving open standards-based deterministic networking through certification, announced XMOS as the first available AVnu-certified Audio Video Bridging (AVB) audio endpoint reference platform.

Industrial and robotics

In June 2014, XMOS partnered with Synapticon, leaders in Cyber Physical Systems, to support emerging trends such as Industry 4.0 in the factory automation market and service robotics market.

References

  1. ^ Peter Clarke (2007-09-06). "XMOS raises $16 million in Series A funding". EE Times Europe. Retrieved 2009-02-02.
  2. ^ "XMOS links with Sensory on voice control". Electronics Weekly. 2016-11-01. Retrieved 2016-11-16.
  3. ^ Bryon Moyer (2016-04-18). "How Would You Use 32 Mics?". EE Journal. Retrieved 2016-11-16.
  4. ^ "Software Flaws from". Electronics Weekly. Retrieved 2016-04-27.
  5. ^ "XMOS LED Tile Reference Design Kit". Embedded Star. Retrieved 2016-04-27.
  6. ^ "The Numerix DSP Blog, Arachnophobia!". Numerix DSP. 2013-12-23. Retrieved 2016-11-16.
  7. ^ Neil Tyler (2017-07-10). "XMOS acquires Setem Technologies to drive the development of next generation voice interfaces". new electronics. Retrieved 2017-07-10.
  8. ^ Clive Maxfield (2017-07-12). "XMOS + Setem could be a game-changer for embedded speech". Embedded.com. Retrieved 2017-07-14.
  9. ^ Neil Tyler (2017-07-11). "Emergence of smart assistants and speakers". New electronics. Retrieved 2017-07-14.
  10. ^ Graham Prophet (2015-03-23). "XMOS boosts performance & connectivity with 2nd-generation multicore MCUs | EETE Automotive". Automotive-eetimes.com. Retrieved 2016-04-27.
  11. ^ "Multicore Microcontrollers for IoT and audio". EE Journal. 2015-03-23. Retrieved 2016-04-27.
  12. ^ "XMOS Adds ARM Core to Its Multi-Processor xCORE-XA Chip". EE Times. 2014-09-26. Retrieved 2016-04-27.
  13. ^ "Xmos selected by Sony for new portable headphone amplifier". Electronics. 2013-10-07. Retrieved 2016-11-16.

51°27′19.0″N 2°35′33.3″W / 51.455278°N 2.592583°W / 51.455278; -2.592583

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