A Bristol chip company that designs programmable xcore processors for voice, audio and AI in everyday devices.
XMOS is a Bristol-based company that designs computer chips but does not make them itself, a model known as fabless. Its signature product is xcore, a family of processors that combine processing, input and output, signal handling and AI on one chip. Because the chip is programmable, the same hardware can be set up by software to run high-quality audio, voice capture, motor control or factory automation. The company has focused on voice and audio, including microphone-array products for smart speakers, and on what it calls AI for the Internet of Things. Its newer designs use the open RISC-V instruction set.
XMOS says its goal is to change the way systems are deployed on silicon, so software engineers can create a custom chip-based product by writing software rather than designing new hardware. It was founded in Bristol in July 2005 by Ali Dixon, James Foster, Noel Hurley, David May and Hitesh Mehta, with early roots in research at the University of Bristol and in the older Inmos and Transputer tradition of parallel computing. David May is a well-known name in computer architecture, and the company's chips are built around channels and threads from that heritage.
The company is headquartered in Bristol and describes itself as a UK fabless semiconductor company. An older profile notes that it opened an office in Chennai, India, and its own materials mention a global team of field engineers who support customers on site. A third-party profile lists around 76 staff, so it is a relatively small, specialist team. In 2016 it split in two, with the server-side AI work going to the newly formed Graphcore and XMOS keeping embedded and edge devices.
Mark Lippett is chief executive and president. He joined XMOS in the 2000s as head of engineering, later became chief operating officer, and before that co-founded a chip design company called Ignios and worked as a network systems engineer at Texas Instruments. The company says it holds over 100 hardware and algorithm patents, and it bought an audio algorithm specialist, SETEM, in 2017 to add source-separation algorithms, which pick out one voice or instrument from a mix. A third-party profile says staff work from physical offices.
Voice products have been used in devices such as Orange's Djingo smart speaker, Deutsche Telekom's Magenta and the Freebox Delta media player, according to a 2019 interview. A chip company like this employs digital and analogue chip designers, embedded software engineers, audio and signal processing specialists, test and validation engineers, applications and field engineers who help customers, and sales, marketing and operations teams. It shows how electronics, software and sound combine in products people use every day.
Website: www.xmos.com
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