XMOS xCORE-USB sliceKIT

Hi Linas,

The clock is 500MHz, and there is a pipeline type structure (in this case 4 stages), meaning that the throughput will vary (e.g. due to pipeline stalls or intentionally due to instructions or I/O) depending on the actual instructions, and so the clock speed in MHz alone doesn't tell the entire story. As a result, if you're running computation only in a single core, the throughput will be anything from 125MIPS to 500MIPS, but 125MIPS will be guaranteed (500/4 = 125). This is under-using the device, since ideally you want to be using multiple XMOS cores, to get most use out of it. There are two separated tiles on the chip, which is how the 1000MIPS figure arises.

I can't find xMOS processor maximum clock frequency. i know, it does say 1000MIPS, but i am more interested in MHz, since i know that my application need high real time computation power, and can't be disassembled to share computation with other cores. That means, if single core can't do computation in real time, it is a bad day for me

I have been working with the XMOS General Purpose Slice Kit for a couple months now. There is a learning curve involved due to the "xc" language extensions and the hybrid architecture XMOS uses. I spent some time learning how their documentation is set up as well as going over their web site often. They seem to have recent updates and continuous additions to the information out there for developers. There have been some "a-ha" moments for subtle details which took some time to discover but for the most part it has been a fun process learning the XMOS world.

I have stayed at a fairly surface level, using some standard embedded protocols like SPI bus and I2C in an effort to move a personal project along but over all after some time I feel this platform will be very useful for special applications. XMOS has been responsive when we reached out to them and said hello as well as answered some questions when we have had them. There is a XMOS community which seems to have some good support. 

In the next six months my team will be using the XMOS for some heavy networking applications and I hope to become fluent with their platform. I hope to see XMOS grow in the coming years.

Steve

Very interesting and useful concept - a little like bridging the real-time divides between FPGA and microcontrollers by throwing cores at the problem. But I also suspect the learning curve might be a little steep to get the most out of it - especially for those who haven't worked with heavily multi-threaded code. Would be very interested in seeing what people end up applying this to.

- Gough

A 16 Core MCU , and I was a fan of Parallax propeller  

This is very interesting roadtest. I like high end arm's because i need lot of computation power, maybe this can be used for parallel signal processing