Software Defined Silicon development kit accelerates electronic design

The folks at XMOS Semiconductor, the creators of what they refer to as "Software Defined Silicon", have introduced a development kit providing everything needed to develop a wide range of applications using their XS1-G4 programmable device. Designs are created using a C-based software development flow that dramatically shortens the time required to build electronic products and systems.

Offering a complete hardware and software development environment, the XS1-G development kit (XDK) features the XS1-G4 target device, QVGA touch screen display, RJ45 10/100 Ethernet port, high-performance stereo audio interface, and XLink connectors for connecting multiple kits together.

The XS1-G4 can be booted from JTAG, an SD/MMC card or on-board SPI boot PROM. In addition to the integrated multi-media I/O, designers have access to on-board switches, status LEDs, and IDC expansion ports. A set of design examples is accessible on startup through a soft-key menu system.

The XS1-G4 device is programmed using web-based XMOS development tools which include C and XC compilers, simulator, and debugger. The kit includes a tutorial in XC, an XMOS-originated programming language supporting parallelism, concurrent and real-time programming using channel-based communications, and event-driven control. Programs can be evaluated using the simulator, or loaded into the XDK for hardware verification. A GDB debugger is also provided to simplify program development.

At the heart of XDK, the XS1-G4 programmable chip features four XCore tiles connected by a high-performance switch, with each tile containing an XCore processor – a 400 MHz 32-bit event-driven processor. The four XCore tiles together execute up to 32 concurrent real-time tasks, provide 1600 MIPs, and service up to 400 million events per second. Data and code is stored in 256 Kbytes of RAM and 32 kBytes of ROM. Tightly coupled to a highly flexible I/O pin structure, the XCore processor can implement a range of hardware and software functions including I/O interfaces, state machines, application programs, DSP and cryptographic algorithms.

The folks at XMOS say that their devices are general-purpose programmable chips used in a wide variety of applications and systems. They are ideal for designers that need flexibility and differentiation. The unique device features and software-based design flow make the XS1-G product family well suited for applications such as Ethernet AV and audio, intelligent LED display control, IEEE-1588 network time keeping and chip-level security systems. Additional information on how XMOS technology supports these applications can be found on the XMOS website (www.xmos.com).

Pricing and availability
Priced at $1,000 USD, the XS1-G development kit from XMOS Semiconductor is available now and can be purchased from www.xmos.com or from local XMOS sales representatives. For further information, please contact info@xmos.com.