The XMOS Experience - what do you think?

All the latest news and announcements from XCore and XMOS.
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jason
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Post by jason »

Lots of good posts. Keep them coming!


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lilltroll
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Post by lilltroll »

I love that XMOS does not have an USB integrated, specially that the do not have ADC-and DACs. It might look nice in the product brief with an integreated n-bit converter , but too often the real performance of the converters are only good enought for checking the battery voltage or making toys. Also the real world errata that follows. The USB chip can be verified to work by thousands of customers. A new "everything included chip" oftens shows a lot of HW errata problems after a while.
If you are a software-guy you might be afraid of the outside chip components - but the hardware guys will have your headake when you find out that you cannot solve the new found errata problem.

To change one external component late in a project => that will delay a project and add cost - but the need to change the MCU/DSC/SOC due to strange behaivour will destroy the project.
Probably not the most confused programmer anymore on the XCORE forum.
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shawn
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Post by shawn »

lilltroll wrote:I love that XMOS does not have an USB integrated, specially that the do not have ADC-and DACs. It might look nice in the product brief with an integreated n-bit converter , but too often the real performance of the converters are only good enought for checking the battery voltage or making toys. Also the real world errata that follows. The USB chip can be verified to work by thousands of customers. A new "everything included chip" oftens shows a lot of HW errata problems after a while.
If you are a software-guy you might be afraid of the outside chip components - but the hardware guys will have your headake when you find out that you cannot solve the new found errata problem.

To change one external component late in a project => that will delay a project and add cost - but the need to change the MCU/DSC/SOC due to strange behaivour will destroy the project.
Yah, thats what I like about it too. Its RAW core. No notion of a device even., just thread to thread
with CSP no abstractions or bells and whistles. Xmos snuffs most fpga apps and god only knows what else.
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errordeveloper
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Post by errordeveloper »

Yah, thats what I like about it too. Its RAW core. No notion of a device even., just thread to thread
with CSP no abstractions or bells and whistles. Xmos snuffs most fpga apps and god only knows what else.
i agree, the only real DISADVANTAGE is absence of floats ;(

well, also about experience with sales - the university rep program sucks in terms of VAT,
right now i just don't have any spare bit of cash to get a kit - i virtually have enuf credit to buy almost two, but the VAT + delivery sucks ;(
out of the 250 bucks credit i managed to get just the two books so far ..
also the on-line store has some buggy scripts, applying the credit it first looks like you will pay just a little extra, but the click on next and it recalculates in a different way!
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leon_heller
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Post by leon_heller »

If you need floats you can use C, XC and C functions can be mixed. They have to be in separate files, of course.

Leon
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errordeveloper
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Post by errordeveloper »

leon_heller wrote:If you need floats you can use C, XC and C functions can be mixed. They have to be in separate files, of course.

Leon
ok, but i imagine a huge performace drop!

could you tell what's gonna be the ration of MIPS vs FLOPS?
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leon_heller
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Post by leon_heller »

Very few embedded applications need floating point, anyway.
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nieuwhzn
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Post by nieuwhzn »

I don't think the Xcores are only meant for embedded applications. XMOS's CTO still has his eye on the parallel computing market. Hardware floating point is a must there. Probably XMOS is seeing the embedded market as its biggest revenue engine while the parallel stuff is more like fun academic R&D?

I still hope that XMOS will come out with a Xcore version that has (almost) no ports, just XLinks. Maybe the freed up silicon can be used for a floating point processor?
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shawn
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Post by shawn »

What do you think about OpenCL for Xmos then?
coupled to LP, coprocessor for your extra DSP, FLOPS.
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