In few words, describe how you see XMOS

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tautic
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Post by tautic »

Folknology wrote:I think the market opportunity isn't pure FPGA or pure MCU, rather its the applications in between that need realtime event processing and concurrency. Currently this market is fulfilled using multiple device combinations rather than single devices. XS1 changes that forever, this is why it is a completely new product segment IMHO. It requires education and lead by example, not over simplified, lazy positioning and messaging in an attempt to squeeze it into the wrong market.

regards
Al
Exactly.


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jonathan
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Post by jonathan »

tautic wrote:
Folknology wrote:I think the market opportunity isn't pure FPGA or pure MCU, rather its the applications in between that need realtime event processing and concurrency. Currently this market is fulfilled using multiple device combinations rather than single devices. XS1 changes that forever, this is why it is a completely new product segment IMHO. It requires education and lead by example, not over simplified, lazy positioning and messaging in an attempt to squeeze it into the wrong market.

regards
Al
Exactly.
Make that +2.
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badger
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Post by badger »

tautic wrote:how do I know I need this cool new silicon, if all I've been using are MCUs or FPGAs without letting the description fall into those categories.
Nail, head.
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jonathan
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Post by jonathan »

badger wrote:
tautic wrote:how do I know I need this cool new silicon, if all I've been using are MCUs or FPGAs without letting the description fall into those categories.
Nail, head.
I wish XMOS staff would stop trolling these forums under pseudonyms.
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Folknology
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Post by Folknology »

Badger are you an Xmos employee out of interest?

regards
Al
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Interactive_Matter
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Post by Interactive_Matter »

badger wrote:
tautic wrote:how do I know I need this cool new silicon, if all I've been using are MCUs or FPGAs without letting the description fall into those categories.
Nail, head.
I think this is exaclty the point where I got wondering what XMOS is.

I thought - hey a beefier MCU, nice. But then I saw that nearly any ARM MCU is much beefier than XMOS. They got more RAM (often) came in nicer breakout boards (often) had more software already existing (until we finished populating github).
So nearly any other MCU is better than XMOS

Completely wrong. XMOS is completely different. By it's parallelism it allows me to solve tasks where I probably would have needed an FPGA. On the other hand I was able to solve these task agile (love this term) in software since there was nothing I had to learn upfront, I just had to write my code and improve it over time.

So none of the FPGA specific complexitites.

I think if you define a target segment for XMOS you should include references to MCU and FPAG, but you should not try to compete in those areas, since pure MCU and pure FPGAs have their specific advantages if you just need an FPGA or MCU.
But if you need a combination of both and do not have real hardcore timing requirements (e.g. sub 10ns timing) you are best off with XMOS.

And XMOS scales as no other chip scales in the market (due to combining two or more XMOS with XLINK).

So to get somebody interested you are right positioning as an MCU makes sence to get considered.

But if you want to define when and in what areas XMOS shines it absolutely hindering.
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Folknology
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Post by Folknology »

Badger are you an Xmos employee out of interest?
If you were not an Xmos employee replying to this would not be an issue
Given your lack of any response I have to suspect that actually you are an Xmos employee, if that's true then using an anonymous freelancer account in this manner to make it look like your not I (and others) would consider to be foul play, dishonest and underhand.

Clearly Xmos employees identify themselves on Xcore as a matter of principle, they also join the Xmos employee group as is standard.

So I will ask you to clarify your position again, Badger are you an Xmos employee?

regards
Al
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xmark
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Post by xmark »

Folknology wrote:
Badger are you an Xmos employee out of interest?
If you were not an Xmos employee replying to this would not be an issue
Given your lack of any response I have to suspect that actually you are an Xmos employee, if that's true then using an anonymous freelancer account in this manner to make it look like your not I (and others) would consider to be foul play, dishonest and underhand.

Clearly Xmos employees identify themselves on Xcore as a matter of principle, they also join the Xmos employee group as is standard.

So I will ask you to clarify your position again, Badger are you an Xmos employee?

regards
Al
Hi Al,

Firstly, I do not know who badger is and consequently whether he/she is an XMOS employee.

You are correct that, as a matter of principal, XMOS employees identify themselves on the xcore site. This is of primary importance when discussing matters to which they are (or may be perceived to be) an insider.

However, our presiding principal is to allow our employees the right to speak as individuals - this is driven by our desire to ensure that we are all on a level playing field - something that we perceive to be beneficial to the growth of a successful, balanced and empowered community.

Were an XMOS employee to use insider knowledge either directly or indirectly to influence the community I would also consider it "foul play, dishonest and underhand". In this case - unless I am mistaken - badger has posted twice, and whilst both posts are sparing (some might say terse), neither are based upon insider knowledge.

My more verbose interpretation (and I am not expressing my opinion either for or against) of the last contribution is that badger was highlighting that XMOS will be more easily discovered if it positions itself with respect to an existing category.

It is all of our responsibilities to avoid ad-hominem comments and I for one would appreciate it if the thread got back onto the very interesting topic described by the title.

Best,

-Mark
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Post by Interactive_Matter »

xmark wrote:
… and I for one would appreciate it if the thread got back onto the very interesting topic described by the title.

Best,

-Mark
I think (as stated above) branding XMOS as MCU is good to catch attention but for me a XMOS is more like a

Scalable Event Driven Processor.

I think processor is important since you do not get a bunch of prefabbed functionality (ADC, Protocols and so on).
I think it's scalabality is rather unique in the market - would be a shame not to exploit that - if one chip is not enough just throw in another one to get twice the amount of cores- that is rather unique. You can replace a number of specialised chip in your design for some XMOS!
It's parallelity or event driveneness (sure that word does not exist) is also quite unique. The more I work with it the more I see it is all about dealing with events and data streams.

But jonathan is right, if you are in one corner of the market you have to make sure that there are others to compete with, so that you are the best solution out there. But the MCU market is far too crowded for XMOS to stand out.

Sp why not put it right in the middle of MCU,FPGA and DSP - it can be anything of this group - and it is quite easy to program.
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jonathan
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Post by jonathan »

Mark - I also want to continue this discussion with constructive contributions from both XMOS and the community. I am completely OK for XMOS staff to post opinions as long as we know who they are. None of us hides our identities. However, this is not the first time a pseudonymous and unhelpful post has originated from within the company and I would like to publicly ask XMOS to help prevent this happening.

Now moving on.
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