April 11, 2014, Seoul, Korea – As consumer, industrial, and automotive infotainment markets rapidly evolve to meet the increasingly demanding requirements of end users, system designers need processors capable of running rich user interfaces without sacrificing real-time responsiveness or power efficiency. To achieve this, system designers must choose between multi-chip solutions or the adoption of virtualization using multi-core processors. The former increases cost, board space, and system complexity, while the latter can have a negative impact on real-time performance and system power.

To address this issue, Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE: FSL, Country Manager for Korea: Yeonho Hwang) introduced the industry's first application processor, integrating the ARM Corex-A9 and ARM Cortex-M4 processors into a single-chip design. This design further enhances the flexibility, performance, and low-power capabilities for Freescale's top-tier i.MX 6 application processor family.

Rajeev Kumar, Director of Marketing and Business Development for Freescale’s MCU business unit, said, “Freescale has achieved another industry first by leveraging its experience and deep understanding of microcontrollers, microprocessors, and heterogeneous SoC designs. For Freescale customers, this innovative device provides the most comprehensive single-chip solution for applications requiring rich user interfaces, real-time responsiveness, and optimized low-power operation.”

Freescale's i.MX 6 series application processors are growing rapidly, with shipments in the automotive sector, in particular, growing by more than 50% between 2012 and 2013.
According to analysts at Strategy Analytics, Freescale ranks second in application processor market share in the automotive market.

Integrating Cortex-M4 processors into Cortex-A class systems enables customers to receive a cost-effective single-chip solution that helps build next-generation system-aware devices capable of running precise operating systems and delivering real-time responsiveness. Freescale’s innovative heterogeneous application processor designs provide additional low-power modes that significantly reduce standby power consumption, enable smaller design dimensions, and deliver fast real-time responsiveness to system inputs.

To support applications that simultaneously require real-time task processing and computationally intensive functions, this SoC employs four independently controlled resource domains to ensure optimal flexibility when partitioning system resources such as memory and peripherals. As a result, peripheral and memory access requests are verified by hardware to provide secure isolation and prevent system resource contamination.

Additional features of the latest i.MX 6 series processors include dual-port Gigabit Ethernet AVB (Audio-Video Bridging) with traffic shaping and packet prioritization for quality of service in automotive and other applications, cost-effective 2D and 3D GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) for enhanced HMI development, flexible boot options including Quad SPI and native NAND support, and memory controllers capable of interfacing with both DDR3 and low-power DDR2. With multiple interface options for the UI and proper integration of standard system interfaces including wireless connectivity, system design flexibility and a low overall BOM are possible.