Freescale Semiconductor

Freescale Semiconductor


MPC8641(D)

Targets: Communication & Wired, Computers & Peripherals, Imaging & Video, Medical, Military & Aerospace, Mobile & Wireless

Freescale Semiconductor MPC8641(D) Block Diagram

The dual-core MPC8641D and the pin-compatible single-core MPC8641 target high-performance embedded compute applications, such as communication/wired (services cards and linecard control plane in switch/routers); computers and peripherals (blade servers); imaging and video (image processing and recognition); medical (image processing and recognition); military/aerospace (image acquisition and processing, cockpit displays; radar/sonar processing); and mobile/wireless (radio network controllers).

The dual-core MPC8641D and single-core MPC8641 processors are based on Power Architecture technology. The MPC86641D integrates two high-performance e600 cores, along with integrated Northbridge and Southbridge capabilities. The 3-way superscalar e600 core runs up to 1.5GHz. Its 7-stage pipeline works well with code that branches unpredictably. Each core has a 128-bit AltiVec vector processing unit, which is suited for copying data quickly, such as in managing a TCP stack. Each core has its own backside 1-Mbyte L2 cache, which offers higher bandwidth, lower latency and less data contention than shared frontside L2 caches. A high-performance peripheral set complements the high-performance cores for reduced board space and simpler system design. Dual 64-bit DDR2 memory controllers provide ample bandwidth to simultaneously feed the cores and allow I/O devices access to the main memory, which can support up to 32-Gbytes. The memory controllers support error correction codes.

The MPC8641D supports two flexible high-performance I/O ports. Dual 8-lane PCI Express ports leverage PCI legacy with a high-performance serial point-to-point link. The 4-lane Serial RapidIO port, with its low software overhead, hardware error correction and support for both memory mapped and packet-based transactions, is suited as a backplane interface. Four onboard Ethernet controllers support 10Mbps, 100Mbps, and 1000Mbps. The Ethernet controllers have TCP and UPD checksum acceleration, quality of service support, and packet header manipulation. This relieves the CPU of managing these functions. Each Ethernet controller can be converted into a FIFO mode for efficient ASIC connectivity.

The MPC8641D is supported by CodeWarrior development tools from Freescale and by an ecosystem of development tools, operating systems, and applications from third-party vendors. Freescale offers an evaluation board, MCEVALHPCN-8641D, in the micro-ATX form factor for the MPC8641D.