Re: XMOS XC-1 kits are ****pping

"Leon" <leon355@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:3d4b6f41-b742-405d-87bd-47e2fb75ac1d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Not if you have four 400 MIPS cores on the chip, each with 64 bits of
I/O, 64k of RAM, with 3.2 Gbit/s comms links between cores and 32
threads per core, with switching between threads in one clock. If the
software is free, it is a very cost-effective solution, especially as
the chips will be very cheap."

Well, if you're already bought the MIPS, then you're correct, Leon, you
might 
as well get some free peripherals out of it.  This is certainly the case
with 
PCs, where even a cheap box has a several GHz CPU and -- for 90+% of users
--  
has tons of free cycles sitting around that can be used for soft modems,
sound 
card DSP, etc.

On the other hand, for embedded systems the best solution isn't always so 
clear-cut.  Look at everyone using FTDI (or similar) USB to RS-232 chips
with 
some dirt cheap low-end microcontroller -- often this approach is cheaper 
overall than using a "USB microcontroller," especially if the product
volumes 
are low so development cost is significant.  Or look at John Larkin's
boxes --  
he uses an X****t to turn Ethernet back into serial, since (presumably)
overall 
it's cheaper/more effective than having one of his guys sit down and
figure 
out how to add an Ethernet stack to his 68k-family CPUs.  Even though the 
stack itself is surely freely available somewhere, the integration time is

still significant.

---Joel