Is XMOS about to break out?
1 min read
It's seven years since XMOS came out of stealth mode and, despite a couple of fairly significant bumps along the road, the company appears to be nicely positioned for the future.
Its original technology was developed at Bristol University by Professor David May, who was lead architect for the Inmos Transputer. This approach - called 'software defined silicon' - aimed to exploit a market gap between ASICs and FPGAs. That was superseded by 'event driven processors' and, more recently, a focus on deterministic multicore MCUs.
And the company is on the up, at least in the opinion of chief executive Nigel Toon. But another indicator of success is interest from investors and the news that XMOS has raised another $26million suggests the market agrees with Toon.
In fact, it's one of the few recent investments of any size in a semiconductor company. But while investment such as this usually comes from the VC community or various funds, this one comes from industry; the investors are Bosch, Huawei and Xilinx. Toon said, with tongue in cheek, 'we must be doing something right'.
While XMOS still faces competition from a number of sources, the company could be on the point of breaking into the 'big time'.
