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New L Series

Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2013 11:30 pm
by Redeye
Can anyone shed any light on the new L Series processors announced today? The press release is a bit woolly and the link for more information (www.xmos.com/newlseries) doesn't work. I can't make head or tail of the L-Series lineup it gives, which are old ones renamed and which ones are new.

My questions :

1. Are the existing L1 (48, 64 and 128 pin variants) and L2 124-QFN still going to be available? And will they continue to be so for the foreseeable future?
2. What packages are these new chips in?
3. Pricing?

Re: New L Series

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2013 10:10 am
by Folknology
Hmm the only thing I can see is this :
XMOS adds new general purpose multicore microcontrollers, grows xCORE family to more than 50 products
microcontrollers, the L Series. The company is adding 6-, 10- and 12-core variants, plus new memory size options, to ... their code using an easy-to-use suite of development tools. The new L-Series multicore ... (Press Releases, XCore, XS1, XS1-L) Press release announcing new members of the xCORE L-Series of ...
Which is here but even when logged in I can't actually access the document

Xmos can we get access to the announcement, is there any info available for us?

regards
Al

Re: New L Series

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2013 10:33 am
by Redeye
Yep, I've read the press release several times and it confuses me more each time.

To be honest the new processors don't look very exciting (to me at least), but what I am concerned about is whether the existing L1 and L2 variants are all surviving as I've got boards I'm about to order with the L1-128 and I want to make sure they're not going obsolete before I carry on. Also there's no mention of the L2-124QFN which I'm also using, which is a worry.

What I'm looking for is :

Old L1 & L2 processors - Which ones are being discontinued, New names vs. Old names
New processors - Names, packages, prices.

Re: New L Series

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2013 11:22 am
by Folknology
I can't see the release can you send it (or the text) to me so I can have a look?

Likewise I would like to know if any of the existing chips are being replaced/discontinued

regards
Al

Re: New L Series

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2013 11:25 am
by Bianco
There are no processors discontinued, just new branding and *kuch* diversification.

The XS1-L8-64 and XS1-L16-128 are available now (alternatively designated L1 and L2 respectively)

Re: New L Series

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2013 11:26 am
by Folknology
Ok found it http://www.xmos.com/news/22-jan-2013/xm ... ly-more-50

(Xmos site search is clearly busted as the original link doesn't work)

regards
Al

Re: New L Series

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2013 12:07 pm
by Folknology
Here is the relevant link to the new series

And the packages look like drop in for current L1/2 range, these appear to be tweaks on number of logical cores per chip only.

Can someone from Xmos confirm or deny pin compatibility with existing L1/2 range to put our minds at rest or not..

regards
Al

Re: New L Series

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2013 3:23 pm
by Redeye
Folknology wrote:Here is the relevant link to the new series
Thanks Al, the table on that page makes a whole lot more sense than the press release did. It'll be interesting to see the pricing. Hopefully the new lower core versions are cheaper than the existing 8/16 core versions that they're based on and they're not going to raise pricing on existing products.

Re: New L Series

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2013 5:50 pm
by Folknology
The brief description is now here in the main XCore site section

(Although it doesn't pull up and links under the resources button yet)

regards
Al

Re: New L Series

Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2013 5:06 pm
by mikronauts
Initially I was quite interested to see new Xcore chips.

Then I took a careful look at the tables.

Barring changes that have not been revealed yet (core / io improvements) it seems to me that the "new" chips are just "thread limited" re-spin's of the old ones. I'd love to be wrong about this, so please correct me if I am missing something.

As far as I can see, the table can be summed up as:

cores = memory size / 64KB
threads per core = "logical cores" / cores

where threads per core < 8 some threads just appear to be disabled; and I would not be surprised at all if the limitation is based purely on the processor model number selected in the IDE perhaps enforced by checking a processor-internal fuse/rom setting.

I really hope I am wrong, but if I am right, I am very dissapointed.