Freescale Samples Eight-Core QorIQ P4080 Processor

Market acceptance for Freescale's QorIQ P4080 product has been exceptionally strong. Numerous early-adopter customers have initiated product development with the P4080 device and OEMs from around the world have selected the P4080 for their systems. Freescale's P4080 design wins span all regions and multiple markets including router, media gateway, military/aeronautics, and 3G/4G wireless infrastructure applications.

The advanced QorIQ P4080 processor is designed to set new standards for performance, power efficiency, scalability and programmability. An industry breakthrough for multicore solutions, Freescale's CoreNet communications fabric enables performance to scale linearly across multiple enhanced Power Architecture cores thus enabling the number of integrated cores to increase as needed to meet customer requirements. The QorIQ P4080 also offers system designers exceptional performance through datapath acceleration and a tri-level cache hierarchy.

"The P4080 sets a new standard for embedded multicore processing," said Brett Butler, vice president and general manager for Freescale's Networking Processor Division. "The device's early market acceptance underscores its highly advanced architecture and clearly demonstrates Freescale's commitment to extending its leadership in networking and communications markets."

About the QorIQ P4080

The QorIQ P4080 provides concurrent handling of control-plane, data-plane and application layer processing tasks. It is ideal for applications such as switches, enterprise and service provider routers, access and media gateways, base station controllers, radio network controllers (RNCs), and general-purpose embedded computing systems in the networking, telecom, industrial, military and aerospace markets.

The QorIQ P4080 features eight enhanced Power Architecture e500mc cores. Each core has a dedicated L2 backside cache, sized for optimal performance, and access to a large frontside L3 cache. Full processor independence, including the ability to boot and reset each individual e500mc core, is a defining characteristic of the device. The cores can work as eight symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) cores, as eight completely asymmetric multiprocessing (AMP) cores, or they can be operated with varying degrees of independence with a combination of SMP and AMP groupings. This processor independence provides the system designer with significant flexibility in partitioning between control, datapath and application processing. The QorIQ P4080 also delivers high levels of hardware partitioning through an embedded hypervisor that simplifies development and enables safe and autonomous operation of multiple individual operating systems.

Overall performance is enhanced via a Datapath Acceleration Architecture (DPAA) that simultaneously provides high networking performance and reduces software complexity. The acceleration architecture works in concert with the cores to manage packet routing, security, quality-of-service and deep packet inspection - freeing the cores to focus on value-added services and application processing. The CoreNet fabric further boosts performance by eliminating bus contention, bottlenecks and latency issues associated with shared bus/shared memory architectures that are common in other multicore approaches.

The QorIQ P4080 features an impressive array of high-speed I/O technologies including dual 10-Gbps Ethernet (XAUI) controllers, eight 1-Gbps Ethernet (SGMII) controllers, three PCI Express v2.0 controllers/ports running at up to 5GHz and two serial RapidIO 1.2 controllers/ports running at up to 3.125GHz.

About QorIQ communications platforms

Freescale QorIQ communications platforms are the next-generation evolution of Freescale's leading PowerQUICC communications processors. Built using high-performance Power Architecture cores, Freescale QorIQ platforms enable a new era of networking innovation where the reliability, security and quality of service for every connection matters. The Freescale QorIQ platforms and roadmap consist of five platforms (P1, P2, P3, P4 and P5) that include single-, dual- and many cores to offer customers a choice of solutions, whether they are ready to move to multicore today or want a smart migration path to get there in the future. For more information about QorIQ platforms, visit www.freescale.com/multicore.

About Freescale Semiconductor

Freescale Semiconductor is a global leader in the design and manufacture of embedded semiconductors for the automotive, consumer, industrial and networking markets. The privately held company is based in Austin, Texas, and has design, research and development, manufacturing or sales operations around the world. www.freescale.com.

Freescale, the Freescale logo, and PowerQUICC are trademarks of Freescale Semiconductor, Inc., Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. QorIQ and CoreNet are trademarks of Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. The Power Architecture and Power.org word marks and the Power and Power.org logos and related marks are trademarks and service marks licensed by Power.org. All other product or service names are the property of their respective owners. (c) Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. 2009.

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