Bristol, UK and Sunnyvale, Calif. – August 3rd, 2010–XMOS® today announces that its customers, Meridian, Intelligent Media Technologies and High Resolution Technologies, have lowered development costs, shortened time to market and increased design flexibility to produce more differentiated products by using XMOS event-driven processors™. XMOS programmable chips bring together the capabilities of processors, DSPs and FPGAs, to help design economical electronic products at exceptional speed.
“Embedded design and development is constantly evolving and because of this we have found that designing ASICs is becoming cost prohibitive and that SoCs tend to lack the interfaces many engineering teams need for their designs,” said Rick Kreifeldt, vice president Global Automotive Research and Innovation at Harman International and president of AVnu Alliance. “XCore® processors provide a flexible, low-cost hardware platform for cost effective development of competitive, differentiated products.”
Meridian
Meridian, a producer of state-of-the-art audio and video home entertainment systems has employed the XMOS multi-threaded event-driven processor in the Meridian Sooloos Control 15 Media Server. Renowned for its ability to lose as little as possible from the signal source to deliver the highest quality audio performance, Meridian chose an XMOS solution due to its flexibility and small footprint. Using XMOS processors, Meridian’s engineering team combined multiple functionalities on one chip, particularly real-time functions that, if done using CPLD and FPGA, Meridian estimates would have cost ten times more than using the XMOS processor.
“At Meridian, our standard is to combine premium sound devices with leading-edge design, and XMOS let us continue this legacy at a low cost and in a short development time, especially considering the degree of integration required with the Control 15,” said Richard Hollinshead, director of engineering at Meridian. “By exchanging multiple silicon pieces for a single XMOS chip, we have lowered costs and harnessed the flexibility to integrate specific, differentiating functionality in the Control 15 that other chips simply didn’t allow. Developing on XCore processors showed us the next generation of programmable silicon.”
Intelligent Media Technologies (IMT)
IMT, a provider of high-performance multimedia network solutions for system integrators and OEMs, used the XMOS processor as the control element in a variety of products for AV networking of classrooms and meeting rooms. IMT chose to use XMOS over a traditional FPGA device to address project cost, solve timing closure problems, and to meet a very tight production deadline.
“With the XMOS processor we did in two weeks what normally would have taken four months with an FPGA, and that included the learning curve with the tools, which have performed flawlessly throughout,” said Bob Proctor, chief technology officer at IMT. “XMOS has ultimately given us the flexibility of an FPGA with the easy, C-based design process of a microcontroller. And at an attractive price as well.”
High Resolution Technologies (HRT)
The Music Streamer by HRT is a USB device used to stream and convert computer-based audio output into high quality audio. HRT developed its latest Music Streamer HD product by utilizing XMOS processors. HRT selected the XMOS processor in favor of a dedicated communication bridge IC, for its ability to support the rapidly emerging USB Audio 2.0 communications standard and to provide a far more programmable high-level language platform for future product development.
“The reference design and the support we got from XMOS combined to make it a much faster and easier experience than we expected to implement USB Audio 2.0,” said Kevin Halverson, chief technology officer at HRT. “It all combined to give us a whole new way of looking at future products.”
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About XMOS
XMOS is transforming the way in which electronic products are designed. Its revolutionary event-driven multi-core processors make it easy to build systems entirely in software. XMOS designers enjoy the fastest route from idea to product, using standard programmable chips to create complete systems combining interface, DSP and control software. For designers in leading electronics brands, entrepreneurs and researchers, XMOS enables innovation and dramatically reduces costs. XMOS is based in Bristol (UK), Sunnyvale (CA, USA) and Chennai (India) with sales offices and representatives across the world.
