Product category: Microprocessors, Microcontrollers and DSPs
News Release from: Freescale Semiconductor | Subject: MPC7457 and MPC7447
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 11 February 2003
PowerPC processors raise
performance at low power
Continuing to drive processor performance and clock speeds within a manageable power envelope, Motorola has introduced the newest and fastest members of its G4 family of PowerPC processors
Continuing to drive processor performance and clock speeds within a manageable power envelope, Motorola has introduced the newest and fastest members of its G4 family of PowerPC processors, the MPC7457 and MPC7447. Manufactured using Motorola's silicon-on-insulator (SOI) process technology, these new processors can perform at 1GHz while consuming less than 10W, making them an optimal high-performance choice for power dissipation-sensitive applications, such as network control plane processing.
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 11 February 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
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Running at up to 1.3GHz, the new devices are the highest performing G4 host processors available for networking and communications applications.
"With the introduction of the MPC7457 processor, Motorola continues to deliver unprecedented levels of performance without breaking the power dissipation window that's critical to today's networking, telecom, and embedded system applications", said Eric Mantion, Senior Analyst with In-Stat/MDR.
"By shipping a processor running at 1GHz with less than 10W, Motorola is providing a family of processors that will fit equally well in the nascent market of blade servers and the mature control plane board market - where the PowerPC instruction set architecture already dominates.
This will give Motorola's new products both a stable market to depend on and a rapidly ascending market with which to grow - especially given both the security concerns and entertainment desires that will be prevalent for the next several years".
The MPC7457 and MPC7447 provide industry-leading 32bit RISC performance in concert with highly efficient power consumption across virtually all clock speeds.
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These newest PowerPC processors offer OEMs a best-in-class solution for a wide range of host processing applications, including high-performance network infrastructure, telecommunications switching equipment, and state-of-the art medical and industrial imaging systems.
"With 1GHz capability and an optimised low-power envelope, the introduction of Motorola's MPC7457 and MPC7447 processors allows us to extend our PowerPMC family of PowerPC modules to support the needs of developers with ever more cutting-edge embedded computing solutions", said Jagat Acharya, Force Computers' Corporate Director of Product Marketing and Engineering, Fremont/Irvine Design Centres.
"These new devices also support other critical requirements of today's telecomms and datacomms designs, such as the need for twice the amount of on-chip L2 cache compared to previous G4 architectures, as well as performance-enhancing features like AltiVec technology and SMP support".
"Motorola is clearly taking its G4 family of PowerPC processors to the next level of speed and performance with the introduction of the 1.3GHz MPC7447 processor", said Felix Diaz, Vice President and General Manager of the Telecom Products Group, Interphase Corp.
"We look forward to the MPC7447 processor to boost system-level performance in next-generation telecom and enterprise solutions.
These new G4 processors also provide the low power dissipation that is required for many embedded designs".
Having previously published scores for the earlier MPC7455 processor, Motorola is also announcing today that the embedded microprocessor Benchmark Consortium (EEMBC) has certified benchmark scores for the new MPC7447 processor.
Demonstrating the capability of the MPC7447 to serve the high-performance processing needs of the embedded market, Motorola has benchmarked its 1.3GHz MPC7447 processor in five different application areas using EEMBC's out-of-the-box certification type: automotive/industrial, consumer, office automation, networking, and telecommunications.
With the MPC7447, Motorola continues to achieve the highest benchmark scores to date in all five application areas: automotive/industrial 1128.8; consumer 172.2; office automation 1531.2; networking 39.5; and telecommunications 37.7.
"Previously, the highest performing embedded processor, according to EEMBC benchmarks, was our award-winning MPC7455 processor.
With today's introduction and the certified MPC7447 EEMBC scores, I'm proud to announce that we have again raised the high performance embedded processing bar", stated Bill Dunnigan, Corporate Vice President and General Manager of Motorola's Computing Platform Division.
"Motorola continues to deliver higher performance and a footprint-compatible migration path that preserves our customers' architectural investments without sacrificing power consumption".
Offered in a 483-pin CBGA package, the MPC7457 processor is footprint-compatible with Motorola's award-winning MPC7455 processor, providing an easy migration path for OEMs seeking higher performance for their new or existing PowerPC processor-based applications.
The MPC7457 is designed to reach speeds of 1.3GHz with a core voltage of 1.3V and includes 512Kbyte of on-chip L2 cache (a twofold increase over the MPC7455's L2 cache), with support for up to 2Mbyte of backside L3 cache.
The MPC7447 processor delivers the same performance and features as the MPC7457, except that it does not provide backside L3 cache support.
Footprint-compatible with Motorola's MPC7445 device, the MPC7447 is available in a 360-pin CBGA package, an ideal choice for space-constrained applications requiring a smaller embedded CPU footprint.
Lower-power versions of the MPC7457 and MPC7447 processors are available, operating at speeds of up to 1GHz with a core voltage of 1.1V.
Both of these new devices are manufactured using Motorola's 0.13-micron HiPerMOS SOI copper interconnect process technology, enabling the processors to deliver superior performance over bulk CMOS technology.
In addition to increased performance, SOI technology offers excellent low power capability, making the devices ideal for embedded applications in the wired and wireless telecommunications, networking, and imaging arenas.
In addition to achieving a new clock speed milestone, the MPC7457 and the MPC7447 devices offer features and capabilities designed to optimise the processors' functionality in embedded applications.
The MPC7457/47 processors feature Motorola's high-speed superscalar G4 core, capable of issuing four instructions per clock cycle (three instructions plus branch) into 11 independent execution units.
All members of Motorola's G4 family of PowerPC processors include a full 128bit implementation of Motorola's advanced AltiVec single instruction multiple data (SIMD) vector processing technology.
AltiVec technology allows designers to leverage existing PowerPC code and add AltiVec performance as market and customer requirements change-helping speed time-to-market and increase system performance without upgrading hardware.
Both processors offer eight instruction BAT (block address translation) and data BAT registers to support efficient embedded operating systems through high-speed mapping of additional large blocks of data.
The L1 caches on both processors support cache way locking, allowing key performance algorithms and code to be locked in the L1 cache.
Continued support of the L3 cache on the MPC7457 helps ensure system compatibility for customers of Motorola's MPC745x PowerPC processor products.
A full symmetric multiprocessing capability enables customers to achieve significantly higher system performance by scaling their embedded system designs with multiple Motorola PowerPC processors.
As with other members of the Motorola PowerPC processor family, the MPC7457 and MPC7447 processors are supported by an extensive suite of software and hardware development tools from Motorola's Smart Networks Alliance members.
Alpha samples of the MPC7457 and MPC7447 PowerPC processors are available today to selected customers.
General market sampling is planned for March, with production expected to commence in Q4 2003.
Suggested retail pricing for the MPC7457 at 1GHz is expected to be $189 in 10k quantities.
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