XMOS is a

fabless semiconductor company Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclu ...

that develops audio products and multicore microcontrollers. The company uses

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

and other sensors in the platforms that it develops. It creates voice interface technology developments for applications in various services that are voice activated.

History

XMOS was founded in July 2005 by Ali Dixon, James Foster, Noel Hurley, David May, and Hitesh Mehta. It received seed funding from the

University of Bristol The University of Bristol is a public university, public research university in Bristol, England. It received its royal charter in 1909, although it can trace its roots to a Merchant Venturers' school founded in 1595 and University College, Br ...

enterprise fund, and Wyvern seed fund. The name XMOS is a loose reference to

Inmos Inmos International plc (trademark INMOS) and two operating subsidiaries, Inmos Limited (UK) and Inmos Corporation (US), was a British semiconductor company founded by Iann Barron, Richard Petritz, and Paul Schroeder in July 1978. Inmos Limited ...

. Some concepts found in XMOS technology (such as channels and threads) are part of the

Transputer The transputer is a series of pioneering microprocessors from the 1980s, intended for parallel computing. To support this, each transputer had its own integrated memory and serial communication links to exchange data with other transputers. ...

legacy. In the autumn of 2006, XMOS secured funding from Amadeus Capital Partners, DFJ Esprit, and

Foundation Capital Foundation Capital is a venture capital firm located in Silicon Valley. The firm was founded in 1995, and in 2012 managed more than $2.4 billion in investment capital. As of 2023, the firm has over $6 billion in assets under management. Histor ...

. It also has strategic investors Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH, Huawei Technologies, and

Xilinx Inc Xilinx, Inc. ( ) was an American technology and semiconductor company that primarily supplied programmable logic devices. The company is renowned for inventing the first commercially viable field-programmable gate array (FPGA). It also pioneered ...

, which in 2014 invested $26.2 million. Additionally, they received an investment through the sale of 22.3% of the Company's shares to Prelude Trust plc of Cambridge. In September 2017, XMOS secured $15M in an investment round led by

Infineon Infineon Semiconductor solutions is the largest microcontroller manufacturer in the world, as well as Germany's largest semiconductor manufacturer. It is also the leading automotive semiconductor manufacturer globally. Infineon had roughly 58,0 ...

. In July 2017, XMOS acquired SETEM, a company that specialises in audio algorithms for source separation. In 2019, XMOS raised $19 million in funding from Harbert European Growth Capital and existing investors. In December 2023, XMOS signed a joint development agreement with Sonical for Headphone 3.0 technology.

Products

Xmos designs multicore microcontrollers under the xCORE series. While the second generation launched in 2015, had dedicated audiocontroller spun off and were used in soundboards as well as headphone amplifiers, the third generation was launched in 2020 and focused on applications within the

AIoT The Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) is the combination of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies with the Internet of things (IoT) infrastructure to achieve more efficient IoT operations, improve human-machine interactions and enhance d ...

. The fourth generation added

RISC-V RISC-V (pronounced "risk-five") is an open standard instruction set architecture (ISA) based on established reduced instruction set computer (RISC) principles. The project commenced in 2010 at the University of California, Berkeley. It transfer ...

compatibility and was announced in December 2022.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Xmos Microcontroller companies Fabless semiconductor companies Technology companies established in 2005 Semiconductor companies of the United Kingdom British brands 2005 establishments in England British companies established in 2005