Freescale Drives Innovation in Embedded Multicore with Latest QorIQ Advanced Multiprocessing Series

The AMP series based on 28nm technology provides optimal performance, power consumption, and price through a new multi-threaded 64-bit core and intelligent integration.

June 21, 2011, San Antonio, Texas, USA (Freescale Technology Forum) — Freescale Semiconductor [NYSE: FSL, www.freescale.co.kr ], a leader in the market for embedded communications processors for networking equipment, announced the next-generation QorIQ multicore platform. The AMP (Advanced Multiprocessing) series is a solution that delivers a new level of performance and power efficiency by integrating new multithreaded 64-bit Power Architecture® cores, 28nm process technology, up to 24 virtual cores, an innovative acceleration engine, and precise power management capabilities.

The new QorIQ AMP (Advanced Multiprocessing) series, distinguished by Freescale’s signature intelligent integration, delivers up to four times the performance of Freescale’s previous generation top-tier model, the 8-core QorIQ P4080 device. The AMP series will add a wide range of next-generation control and data plane processor combinations, ranging from cost-effective ultra-low-power single-core products to advanced SoCs targeting the most demanding networking, industrial, military/aerospace applications.

The AMP series is designed to enable network equipment OEMs and service providers to meet the demanding power and performance requirements arising from the global explosion of network endpoints and associated IP traffic. According to Cisco, global IP traffic is projected to quadruple by 2015, reaching 966 EB (exabytes) annually. Cisco also forecasts that the increase in IP traffic will reach 200 EB between 2014 and 2015 alone, exceeding the total volume of global IP traffic in 2010 (Source: Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global IP Traffic Forecast, 2010–2015). Freescale’s new AMP series processors provide a precise combination of performance, power, and intelligent integration to address not only these networking challenges but also the stringent requirements of the military/aerospace, industrial, robotics, storage, medical, video systems, and printing sectors.

"Lisa Su, Executive Director and General Manager of Freescale Networking and Multimedia Group, said, 'Freescale has expanded and strengthened its market share leadership in the embedded processor market for wired and wireless networks, largely driven by the rapid adoption and strong market recognition of the previous generation QorIQ multicore products.' She added, 'The new AMP series delivers next-generation innovation to the QorIQ family by leveraging Freescale's unique strengths of R&D capabilities, rich IP, and iconic intelligent integration.'"

Freescale led the communications processor field by producing and supplying 45nm devices with timely and accurate specifications. Based on this success, Freescale plans to actively expand into the embedded market with 28nm process technology through its AMP series.

New multithreaded e6500 core with AltiVec technology
The foundation of the Freescale QorIQ AMP series is the new 64-bit multithreaded Power Architecture e6500 core, operating at up to 2.5 GHz. Optimized for both advanced control plane and high-performance data plane applications, the e6500 will be the core component of all AMP series products. The e6500 integrates an extended version of the proven and widely adopted high-performance AltiVec Vector Processing Unit. AltiVec handles high-bandwidth data processing and algorithm-dependent computations, providing Freescale customers with DSP-level performance and other benefits.

Enhanced performance acceleration technology
The programmable e6500 core is complemented by a wide range of cutting-edge acceleration engines and coprocessor technologies, such as Freescale's proven DPAA (Data Path Acceleration) and QUICC engine technologies, along with enhanced security, pattern matching, and compression/decompression engines. The AMP series' compression/decompression technologies deliver 20Gbps of performance, while the new SEC 5.0 encryption accelerator alleviates the processing load of protocols such as LTE, IPSec, and SSLcrypto at speeds up to 40Gbps, providing raw encryption hardware acceleration performance of nearly 140Gbps to support current and future wireless and wired algorithms. In addition, other modern acceleration/load relief technologies supporting regex acceleration, 128-bit SIMD data prefetching, serial analysis and classification, and QoS (Quality of Service) functions have been integrated.

The AMP series also incorporates many of the previous generation QorIQ innovations, such as CoreNet interconnect fabric, cache-coherent memory hierarchy, hardware-based virtualization that ensures optimal performance, and dynamic on-chip debug technology that provides a deep view of complex software processes.

"The new QorIQ AMP series highlights Freescale's continued investment in cutting-edge multicore processing technology for a number of top-tier global networking equipment manufacturer customers," said Linley Gwennap, Senior Analyst at The Linley Group. "Building on the strong execution demonstrated in the market delivery of the first-generation 45nm QorIQ products, Freescale is well-positioned to achieve continued success in new cutting-edge cores and accelerators, including 28nm process technology and the latest QorIQ AMP series."

Advanced power management system
To satisfy the active power range requirements of OEMs, the power management system of the AMP series includes a variable mode power switch that allows customers to independently and precisely change the power of the core and other processing units.

The three layers of AMP products
The AMP series consists of three tiers of products belonging to a highly scalable product family, ranging from ultra-high-performance processors offering 24 virtual cores to single-core products.

Control plane processor (service provider router, storage network)
- Up to 6 cores operating at up to 2.5GHz
- 6MB or more of L2 cache

Advanced Data Plane Processors (Routers, Switches, Access Gateways, Military/Aviation Applications)
- Up to 24 virtual cores operating at up to 2.0 GHz
-50Gbps IP forwarding performance
- Advanced application acceleration features

Low-cost data plane processors (media gateways, NAS, integrated services routers)
- Up to 8 virtual cores operating at up to 1.6 GHz
- Advanced application acceleration features
- Power consumption of less than 10W

The T4240 device, the first product in the Freescale QorIQ AMP series, integrates multiple hardware accelerators with 12 dual-threaded e6500 cores to provide 24 threads for advanced data plane processing applications. Furthermore, thanks to dual-thread efficiency, improved DMIPs per thread, and higher frequencies, it delivers four times the performance and more than double the power efficiency compared to the previous generation QorIQ P4080 device.