WNAMM09: XMOS Chip - The Future Of Audio?

Not the first time we've seen audio over Cat5 sure, but this time it is a little different – the chips used as the brains in this operation are unique. They are repogrammable – most slicon is what it is, you design the functions in hardware and press em up, but with XMOS you can actually reconfigure them after manufacture. As CEO James Foster puts it, this means that in the case of audio networking, a variety of protocols can be catered for, both new and legacy with samplerates limited by the bandwidth.

These guys have teamed up with various hardware manufacturers, including Apple to create an open standard for this kind of network distribution which means we will be one step closer to a unified audio and data network system for the home and the studio. It also perhaps signifies the future for FireWire, I hope not, I'm rather fond of it – it works y'know?

• XMOS.com

Amazing technology indeed.

Thanks again Nick, your whole coverage of NAMM'09 is impeccable.

30-Jan-09 05:23 PM

this is great and a boon, but firewire will take at least another 5 years and then of course, USB3 is just around the corner..

Still, it's great to see some healthy competition :-D

01-Feb-09 02:58 PM

Given that Apple dropped firewire from the new macbooks I'd say its future is already starting to look a little flakey.

01-Feb-09 04:39 PM

good technology, but seriously xmos is scary! cmos would still be the standard as i don't think any manufacturer would want users to modify the algorithms they programmed!

i wonder who would use these reprogrammable chips - perhaps beta testing groups, manufacturer collaborations,e tc.

02-Feb-09 06:47 PM

this tech right here makes my brain hurt. lol

09-Feb-09 07:36 PM

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