XMOS Semiconductor has revealed plans to introduce a completely new type of programmable semiconductor technology. The UK start-up’s ‘Software Defined Silicon’ (SDS) will provide consumer electronics system designers with the unit cost advantage of SoCs and the flexibility of FPGAs.
Based on arrays of processors, SDS devices will allow system functions that would normally be implemented in hardware to be defined in software, unifying the design flow for software and hardware. XMOS Semiconductor will be offering chips, software IP and development tools and its first product will be announced during Q1’2008.
James Foster, XMOS Semiconductor CEO said, “There’s a technology gap waiting to be filled in consumer electronic system design. Designers need to more strongly differentiate their products and react more quickly to rapid changes in technology standards or fashion. Existing SoC and FPGA solutions simply don’t offer the right combination of flexibility and cost.”
XMOS Semiconductor’s event driven, multi-threaded processor engine called XCore, has been developed to deliver fast real time response and low silicon cost. The integration of pin control within Xcore coupled with an inter-core communication link named XLink will allow complete systems, including interfaces, to be implemented in software. Product development uses a unified embedded software flow using C-based programming languages.
XMOS Semiconductor, www.xmos.com
