XMOS product longetivity and commitment
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Meancat
- New User
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- Joined: Wed Mar 29, 2023 7:10 am
XMOS product longetivity and commitment
Hello, I'm unable to find the information regarding XMOS product longetivity and commitment. I see quite some XS2 dev boards, for example, already obsoleted, and curious whether XU208 will be available for some years, or we need to go for XS3 based solution for a new product we are developing. Any information regarding this topic is appreciated, thanks.
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henk
- Respected Member
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- Joined: Wed Jan 27, 2016 5:21 pm
Hi,
There are no plans to discontinue XCORE200. For a new solution where you design a new board you may as well go XCORE.AI, it is better in almost every aspect.
Henk
There are no plans to discontinue XCORE200. For a new solution where you design a new board you may as well go XCORE.AI, it is better in almost every aspect.
Henk
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Meancat
- New User
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- Joined: Wed Mar 29, 2023 7:10 am
Thank you! Yes, we decided to go with XU316.
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lukehatpadl
- Junior Member
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- Joined: Sat Jul 08, 2023 5:15 am
Do any of the XS3 solutions support Ethernet?
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akp
- XCore Expert
- Posts: 578
- Joined: Thu Nov 26, 2015 11:47 pm
It depends what kind of Ethernet you want. I am not aware of any modern XMOS MCU that has a built in Ethernet PHY, you have always needed a PHY chip.
For MAC/MII support, it doesn't seem like XS3 will have built in 1Gbps MAC and RGMII. Therefore, if you need 1Gbps link to your MCU, and can live without the other XS3 features, then XS2 is probably a good choice. However, if all you need is 100Mbps Ethernet, then XS3 should easily handle 100Mbps MAC/MII from the XMOS Ethernet library.
I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that the XS3 is potentially capable of doing GMII in software, but to my knowledge there is no software in the wild to support that. I don't know how difficult it would be to implement. With an 8 bit port you have four 125MHz clocks between port reads or writes (due to the 32 bit shift register). Operating at max core speed of 160 MHz, that gives slightly more than five instructions per read/write to the port. It would require hand-optimized, dual-issue assembly like for the RGMII peripheral in the XS2. The XS2 RGMII peripheral has an 8 bit data bus like GMII so I don't see an impediment there, especially as XS3 can run faster than XS2.
I doubt it's worthwhile to pursue software RGMII for XS3 but I don't know enough to rule it out.
For MAC/MII support, it doesn't seem like XS3 will have built in 1Gbps MAC and RGMII. Therefore, if you need 1Gbps link to your MCU, and can live without the other XS3 features, then XS2 is probably a good choice. However, if all you need is 100Mbps Ethernet, then XS3 should easily handle 100Mbps MAC/MII from the XMOS Ethernet library.
I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that the XS3 is potentially capable of doing GMII in software, but to my knowledge there is no software in the wild to support that. I don't know how difficult it would be to implement. With an 8 bit port you have four 125MHz clocks between port reads or writes (due to the 32 bit shift register). Operating at max core speed of 160 MHz, that gives slightly more than five instructions per read/write to the port. It would require hand-optimized, dual-issue assembly like for the RGMII peripheral in the XS2. The XS2 RGMII peripheral has an 8 bit data bus like GMII so I don't see an impediment there, especially as XS3 can run faster than XS2.
I doubt it's worthwhile to pursue software RGMII for XS3 but I don't know enough to rule it out.