Motorola unveils next-gen PowerQUICC and ColdFire processors
Oct 19, 2002 — by LinuxDevices Staff — from the LinuxDevices Archive — 1 viewsSan Jose, CA and Stockholm, Sweden — (press release excerpt) — This week, in connection with the Microprocessor Forum (San Jose) and the Smart Networks Developer Forum (Stockholm), Motorola made two embedded processor announcements: a next generation superscalar 32-bit ColdFire microprocessor core, and the next generation of its PowerQUICC II processor family.
ColdFire microprocessor core
At 333 MHz and 610 million instructions per second (MIPS) in 0.13 micron process technology, the V5 core offers significant performance increases over the V4 ColdFire core, previously the highest performing ColdFire core on the market. The superscalar microarchitecture of the V5 core increases the number of instructions that can be executed simultaneously, thereby increasing the performance of the core. With dual execution pipelines and a larger branch cache, this next-generation core provides a 2x performance increase compared to a 220 MHz MCF5407 device, a V4-based standard product. Over the last seven years, four generations of 32-bit ColdFire core microarchitectures have improved performance by a factor of 24 since the original 25 MIPS, 33 MHz Version 2 designs. ColdFire processors are used in a wide range of applications from set-top boxes to routers to MP3 players and fingerprint recognition systems. The V5 core builds on the success of the ColdFire family, which has shipped more than 52 million units to date.
PowerQUICC II processors
Motorola's PowerQUICC II processors include both a high-performance embedded PowerPC instruction set based G2 core and a powerful RISC-based Communications Processor Module (CPM). The CPM off-loads peripheral tasks from the embedded core while providing support for multiple communication protocols – including 10/100 Mbps Ethernet, 155 Mbps ATM, and multi-channel HDLC. The next-generation PowerQUICC II processor retains software compatibility with the current PowerQUICC II offerings, while increasing performance by 50 percent. Taking advantage of the 0.13-micron process, these devices offer significant performance increases and power savings over the current generation PowerQUICC II devices – with speeds of up to 450 MHz on the core and up to 300 MHz on the CPM at less than 2 Watts. The products announced include . . .
- MPC8270 — Ideal for control plane applications not requiring ATM support, the MPC8270 includes 3 MII/RMII interfaces for 10/100 Ethernet and 128 channels of HDLC. The MPC8270 is offered at CPU speeds of 266, 333 and 450 MHz with the CPM operating at 166, 250 and 300 MHz respectively.
- MPC8275 — Packaged in the small footprint PBGA package, the MPC8275 includes 3 MII/RMII interfaces for 10/100 Ethernet, 2 UTOPIA interfaces for ATM and 128 channels of HDLC. The 8275 is offered at a CPU speed of 266 MHz with the CPM operating at 166 MHz.
- MPC8280 — Packaged in the pin-compatible TBGA package, the MPC8280 includes 3 MII/RMII interfaces for 10/100 Ethernet, 2 UTOPIA interfaces for ATM, increases HDLC channel support from 128 to 256 and includes the powerful Inverse Multiplexing for ATM microcode. The MPC8280 is offered at CPU speeds of 333 and 450 MHz devices with the CPM operating at 250 and 300 MHz respectively.
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