Freescale samples eight-core QorIQ P4080 processor

Market acceptance grows for Freescale’s QorIQ products as availability begins for breakthrough, fabric-based P4080 device

SHENZHEN, China (Freescale Technology Forum China). – Freescale Semiconductor is now sampling its QorIQ P4080 multicore processor – the flagship member of Freescale’s QorIQ product family and the company’s fourth device now available based on 45-nm process technology for optimal performance and power efficiency.

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 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.”

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.