Bugger RTL

But then he would say that wouldn’t he? Professor David May FRS, doubles as a university department head, and as the CTO of XMOS Semiconductor.

Now XMOS Semiconductor has a chip which is programmed in C/C++. To emphasise the point, XMOS calls its chips ‘Software Defined Silicon’.

This is in keeping with the Spirit of the Age because, according to May: “We estimate that the world’s universities are producing 20-30 software designers for every hardware engineer.”The responsibility of product differentiation increasingly lies in the software domain."

May’s perception is that consumer electronics companies hire loads of software engineers but few chip designers.

So give them a chip programmable in a way that software engineers like, and you’ve got a nice little earner.

"Consumer electronics customers want to look at tasks and functions, like Ethernet and UARTs, and they have built up teams of software engineers who understand C, very few understand RTL. They're not semiconductor guys. They’re engineering teams set up to write software in C," says May’s co-founder at XMOS, Noel Hurley.

TOMORROW: TOP TEN CHIP COMPANIES' R&D SPEND