XMOS

XMOS is a fabless semiconductor company that develops generative systems-on-chips designed to integrate control, input/output, digital signal processing, and artificial intelligence functions. The company's XCORE platform enables users to generate customizable system-on-chips with real-time reconfigurability and deterministic parallel architecture, enabling developers to execute multiple tasks simultaneously.[1]

History

XMOS was founded in July 2005 by Ali Dixon, James Foster, Noel Hurley, David May, and Hitesh Mehta.[2] It received seed funding from the University of Bristol enterprise fund, and Wyvern seed fund.[3]

The name XMOS is a loose reference to Inmos. Some concepts found in XMOS technology (such as channels and threads) are part of the Transputer legacy.[4]

XC programming language

XC is a programming language developed by XMOS to support real-time, embedded, and parallel programming on the company's xcore processor architecture. It is designed to provide deterministic execution and fine-grained concurrency, enabling software-defined solutions for time-critical applications such as audio processing, industrial control, and communications.

XC was introduced by XMOS in the late 2000s as part of its toolchain for programming xcore processors. It was designed to offer a high-level abstraction for expressing parallelism and hardware interaction, building on the principles of the occam programming language and the Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) model developed by Tony Hoare.

Over time, XMOS has shifted its development tools toward standard C and C++ compilers, but XC remains a key part of the legacy toolchain and is still supported in the XTC Tools suite.[22]

Design and Features

XC combines elements of C with concurrency and communication constructs inspired by occam. Key features include:

XC is supported by the XTC Tools[22] suite, which includes:

Parallelism: Built-in support for concurrent tasks using the for mutual exclusion
Events: A mechanism unique to xcore that enables low-latency, interrupt-free signaling between hardware and software components.[23]

Standards-compliant C/C++ compilers
XC compiler
Simulator and symbolic debugger
Runtime instrumentation and trace libraries

Execution Model

XC programs are compiled and executed on xcore processors, which feature multiple logical cores capable of executing tasks in parallel. The language allows developers to statically assign tasks to cores and define communication topologies using channels. This model supports deterministic execution, making XC suitable for applications requiring precise timing and low-latency I/O.

Current Status

As of version 15.3 of the XTC Tools, XMOS has shifted its focus toward using standard C for xcore programming, citing broader developer familiarity and ecosystem support. However, the XC language remains available and continues to be used in legacy and specialized applications.[24][25]

type	Private
industry	Semiconductors
founded	July 2005, Bristol, UK
hq location city	Bristol
hq location country	United Kingdom
key people	Mark Lippett (CEO & President)
products	Voice controllers, Multicore microcontrollers, xCore, xCORE-200, xCORE-AUDIO, xCORE-VOICE, xCORE VocalFusion, xTIMEcomposer
website	http://www.xmos.com/
brands	xCORE, VocalFusion