| General > General Technical Chat |
| Easy money...£200k/yr job in electronics? |
| << < (5/12) > >> |
| tggzzz:
--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on March 22, 2020, 10:07:25 pm ---You really enjoy those xCORE chips, don't you? ;D --- End quote --- Yes, I do! I also like removing ignorance :) Using them is surprisingly easy and fun, in a way I haven't experienced since the 80s :) Better that than fighting errata and weird corner cases found in many modern chips. What's not to like about that! |
| MK14:
--- Quote from: tggzzz on March 22, 2020, 10:03:42 pm ---The modern descendent is the XMOS xCORE embedded microcontroller devices running xC. 32 core 4000 MIPS (espandable) chips with hard realtime characteristics unlike any other processor. The IDE examines the optimised code and specifies the min/max code execution times - none of that hit and miss "run the code and hope we notice the worst case" rubbish :) They are are effectively MCUs which are halfway towards FPGA characteristics. Occam is now xC, and coupled with the comms fabric and processors, they are a delight to use. Commercially successful, buy them at DigiKey and elsewhere https://www.digikey.co.uk/products/en?keywords=xmos --- End quote --- For some real-time/embedded applications, that feature, can be very useful. E.g. Some kind of Robot, 3d-printer, multiple-MEMS-Microphones, or multiple high speed motors, with Quadrature sensing. May find the independent cpu cores and hence predictable, low latency interrupts and other operations. Allow better real time embedded software systems, to be created. Because, in some application areas, 2 to 120 microseconds worth of interrupt latency, can make the difference between the system working, very smoothly and glitch free. As opposed to, a significant latency, of perhaps 100 micro seconds. Which is too long for some applications. FPGAs, although tending to be very fast as well. Can present a very steep, long and somewhat expensive, learning curve. The parts can be pricey, as well. Whereas, microcontrollers, can be programmed by, potentially more plentiful software/electronics engineers. I.e. Proper/experienced FPGA engineers, tend to be in much shorter supply, and potentially more expensive to employ. The code tends to be less portable, and more time-consuming to create, as well. On the other hand, there are things which can convert C(/C++ ?) or C like languages, into FPGA code (VHDL/Verilog), and ASICs, can be a cheaper alternative to FPGAs. Also, if your production volumes allow it, and you can afford the high initial engineering costs (NRE), and extra time it takes, to get it to market. Then ASICs could be the way to go. But, opinions do vary. Some think that FPGAs, are as easy as mcus (microcontrollers). |
| tggzzz:
--- Quote from: MK14 on March 23, 2020, 12:10:15 am --- --- Quote from: tggzzz on March 22, 2020, 10:03:42 pm ---The modern descendent is the XMOS xCORE embedded microcontroller devices running xC. 32 core 4000 MIPS (espandable) chips with hard realtime characteristics unlike any other processor. The IDE examines the optimised code and specifies the min/max code execution times - none of that hit and miss "run the code and hope we notice the worst case" rubbish :) They are are effectively MCUs which are halfway towards FPGA characteristics. Occam is now xC, and coupled with the comms fabric and processors, they are a delight to use. Commercially successful, buy them at DigiKey and elsewhere https://www.digikey.co.uk/products/en?keywords=xmos --- End quote --- For some real-time/embedded applications, that feature, can be very useful. E.g. Some kind of Robot, 3d-printer, multiple-MEMS-Microphones, or multiple high speed motors, with Quadrature sensing. May find the independent cpu cores and hence predictable, low latency interrupts and other operations. Allow better real time embedded software systems, to be created. Because, in some application areas, 2 to 120 microseconds worth of interrupt latency, can make the difference between the system working, very smoothly and glitch free. As opposed to, a significant latency, of perhaps 100 micro seconds. Which is too long for some applications. FPGAs, although tending to be very fast as well. Can present a very steep, long and somewhat expensive, learning curve. The parts can be pricey, as well. Whereas, microcontrollers, can be programmed by, potentially more plentiful software/electronics engineers. I.e. Proper/experienced FPGA engineers, tend to be in much shorter supply, and potentially more expensive to employ. The code tends to be less portable, and more time-consuming to create, as well. On the other hand, there are things which can convert C(/C++ ?) or C like languages, into FPGA code (VHDL/Verilog), and ASICs, can be a cheaper alternative to FPGAs. Also, if your production volumes allow it, and you can afford the high initial engineering costs (NRE), and extra time it takes, to get it to market. Then ASICs could be the way to go. But, opinions do vary. Some think that FPGAs, are as easy as mcus (microcontrollers). --- End quote --- Yup. Effectively there are no interrupts in xCORE processors: you simply dedicate a core to an i/o port and (if necessary) it sleeps until the input has arrived. The language has primitives indicating the clock cycle on which output will occur, or capturing the clock cycle on which input did occur. To a useful approximation inter-core comms is the same as i/o: messages to/from other cores are identical to "messages" to/from i/o ports. I'm far from being an expert in xCORE or xC, but it just worked as I wanted it to work, as stated in the documentation and as I would expect it to work. Stunningly pain-free, unlike other MCUs with their strange i/o config registers etc :) |
| MK14:
Someone seems to have stolen your thread. https://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/threads/great-idea-for-chinese-importation-business.404674/ Also, someone there, seems to already know you. (Around the 6th post, User called 'MY OFFICE IN CHINA'). --- Quote ---Delusional. --- End quote --- --- Quote ---Hello, I have been invited to join a potentially very lucrative “electronics company” on a £200k/yr salary. Should I take the job? The idea is that we “produce” architectural lighting products, eg “wall-washers” , color changing lights etc etc. The idea is that we design a few prototype products ourselves, and then show these to politicians, heads of innovation funds, potential investors, etc etc. They will then give us the innovation funding that we need to live…….. At this point, we can then take our products to trade shows, where we can meet our potential customers… When we have the customer contact details, we then bring in our associated Chinese Lighting Designer company…….they will design and make the actual products for us…at a price that the customers won’t be able to refuse. Since we will have the customer contact details, we can then match the European customers with our associated Chinese company….we then sit there and get well minted…making a fortune!!...just middle –manning the products through! Perfect isn’t it? Some say that the Chinese are actually, at this point, interested in knocking out European Electronics design capability by flooding our market with cheap Chinese products, so that means that the Chinese company won’t even be interested in making much profit….so that means more profit for us !!! Because I have formal electronics qualifications, I am needed to kind of make the British company look like a bona fide electronics company…which of course it will not really be….it will simply be a “middle-man”. When we have domination of the architectural lighting market, we can then further our engineering contacts in China, and then extend our ploy into other areas like electric car chargers etc etc. The Chinese products are of excellent quality, since the Chinese are now the world’s best power supply engineering designers. …And when we have shipped millions of products to millions of happy European customers, we can use this to attract even more customers. There is one worry, and that is that we will have to visit China regularly in order to assure that our products are being manufactured in a suitable quality way. There is fear that we could contract coronavirus…..or even that the British government will in future ban travel to China….but we believe that COVID19 will blow over…and has already been totally eradicated in China(?)…China is now the world’s safest place for COVID19(?)...and the chinese markets where livestock are slaughtered on site and result in virus spread will simply close now? What do you think? Should I take the job? --- End quote --- |
| MK14:
--- Quote from: tggzzz on March 23, 2020, 12:34:55 am ---Yup. Effectively there are no interrupts in xCORE processors: you simply dedicate a core to an i/o port and (if necessary) it sleeps until the input has arrived. The language has primitives indicating the clock cycle on which output will occur, or capturing the clock cycle on which input did occur. To a useful approximation inter-core comms is the same as i/o: messages to/from other cores are identical to "messages" to/from i/o ports. I'm far from being an expert in xCORE or xC, but it just worked as I wanted it to work, as stated in the documentation and as I would expect it to work. Stunningly pain-free, unlike other MCUs with their strange i/o config registers etc :) --- End quote --- For some application areas, that sounds really good. It reminds me of the Propeller processors (by Parallax), at least in the concept of having many cores, for easy/good embedded use. |
| Navigation |
| Message Index |
| Next page |
| Previous page |