Going all soft
1 min read
A start up building on technology developed at Bristol University has come out of ‘stealth mode’ to announce an approach which it claims will provide designers of consumer electronics systems with the unit cost advantage of an SoC, but with the flexibility of fpgas.
XMOS Semiconductor calls the approach software defined silicon. Marketing director Noel Hurley (pictured) contended that asics, assps and fpgas were, for one reason or another, unsuited for product differentiation. “We can provide configurability at an attractive price and are focusing on low cost high volume consumer electronics.”
As the name suggests, device functionality is determined entirely by software. Hurley said: “This fits well with the way in which our target market has evolved. Companies have large numbers of software engineers, but few rtl designers. This is more about blocks, less about wiring gates.”
Essentially, the devices will use a generic 32bit risc processor with an associated block of memory. “Both are silicon area efficient,” Hurley claimed, “which gives our cost advantage.” XMOS is looking at a $1 price in volume for the devices, which will be made on a 90nm TSMC process.
Development is C based, responding to the approach’s target market. “The key is to make development quick and easy,” Hurley continued, “because our target customers want to push products out of the door.”
