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On the tiles
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07/12/2007
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In the world of consumer electronics, cost is king. For this reason, the more successful products will, more than likely, feature at their hearts an asic. That’s fine, as long as the volumes justify the expenditure.
For the longest time, asics had no real competition – at least until the fpga community came up with the structured asic approach. The idea here is to use the programmable nature of an fpga to finalise your design, then take advantage of asic style manufacturing processes to reap the cost benefits.
Another approach is the application specific standard product (assp). Although taking advantage of asic like production costs, these devices can’t be used for a specific product, although they can be used for specific operations.
It’s in the area between these approaches where start up XMOS Technology believes it can start changing designers’ minds. Its approach is software defined silicon and XMOS was born out of research into event driven processing conducted by chief technology officer David May, who was lead architect for the legendary Inmos Transputer.
More importantly, if you are developing products targeted at the consumer market, XMOS believes it can make its chips available for less than $10.
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Author
Graham Pitcher
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