Comms processor rips into next-generation networks

Motorola has revealed details of its first PowerQUICC III SoC product implementation, the MPC8560.

Motorola has revealed details of its first PowerQUICC III SoC product implementation, the MPC8560.

Ideal for wired and wireless communications processing tasks, the MPC8560 PowerQUICC III delivers the PowerQUICC family's renowned integration together with performance headroom for intensive control plane processing tasks and increased forwarding plane bandwidth.

Leveraging the comprehensive PowerQUICC III SoC architecture, the MPC8560 employs a host of leading industry standards and innovative Motorola technologies - including a high-performance Book E PowerPC e500 core, an enhanced communications processor module (CPM), RapidIO interconnect technology, Motorola's OCeaN crossbar switch fabric, dual Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, and support for double data rate SDRAM and PCI-X.

"With the introduction of the PowerQUICC III family, Motorola closes its last remaining gap in the continuum of processors from CPE to the optical backbone", says Eric Mantion, Senior Analyst for In-Stat/MDR.

"No other vendor can claim the breadth that is within Motorola's control and the smart networks platform support structure that buoys the entire processor spectrum is truly world class.

Motorola has continuously focused on making the arduous task of developing next-generation carrier equipment as painless as possible for its customers, and it shows".

The MPC8560 offers significant performance increases, with core speeds of up to 1GHz and CPM speeds of up to 333MHz.

The CPM architecture retains software compatibility with the industry-leading PowerQUICC II family while offering greater than 1.0Gbit/s aggregate bandwidth - in addition to the MPC8560's dual Gigabit Ethernet interfaces.

By using an SoC architecture in developing the PowerQUICC III family, Motorola is able to leverage a high degree of integration and future product flexibility.

With the capability to add and customize specific processor elements, this SoC approach further enables the company to design and develop a variety of products targeted at specific application areas.

Excitement is already building for Motorola's PowerQUICC III architecture from leading networking equipment manufacturers such as Alcatel.

"After a comprehensive study we have concluded that Motorola's PowerQUICC III architecture offered the combination of integration, performance and value we wanted for our next generation optical multiservice platform", stated Paolo Danielutti, vice president, Optical Multi-service Networks for Alcatel's optical networks activities.

"Motorola has been the market leader in this space since our introduction of the industry's first communications processor in 1989", said David Perkins, vice president and general manger of Motorola's Networking and Computing Systems Group.

"Leveraging our PowerQUICC III architecture, the new MPC8560 adds to our strong portfolio of PowerQUICC and PowerQUICC II communications processors.

Our innovative System-on-Chip methodology maintains our commitment to unsurpassed integration and provides our valued customers with a strong upgrade path and performance enhancements for years to come".

The MPC8560 with its high degree of integrated functionality makes it an ideal solution for integrated control and forwarding plane processing in multiservice access platforms, central office switching and transmission, wireless infrastructure, gigabit and terabit routers, voice gateway products, IP virtual private networks and optical networking equipment.

As with all PowerQUICC devices, the MPC8560 integrates control and forwarding plane tasks with a PowerPC ISA-based core and a communications processor module.

The MPC8560 offers a significant core performance increase, delivering operating speeds up to 1GHz and providing greater headroom for control plane processing tasks.

The MPC8560 integrates a large 256Kbyte on-chip memory array.

Providing versatile options for customer design needs, the memory array is designed to support eight-way set associative L2 cache operation, memory mapped SRAM operation, or the array can be divided as a combination.

The CPM performance has also been increased to 333MHz, providing more internetworking bandwidth between ATM, TDM, Ethernet and other protocols while maintaining software compatibility with the PowerQUICC II CPM.

The CPM contains two multichannel controllers, four serial communications controllers, three fast communications controllers, eight time division multiplexed (TDM) interfaces, 32Kbyte of dual-port RAM, 128Kbyte ROM plus 32Kbyte of RAM for protocol microcode storage.

Enabling high-speed connections to additional CPUs, peripherals or bus bridges, the MPC8560 employs the open standard RapidIO interconnect - the next generation high-speed interconnect for embedded applications.

Supporting four priority levels with a maximum data payload of 256byte per packet, the RapidIO interface is engineered to deliver significantly greater bandwidth, scalability and reliability than interconnects used today.

Leveraging the concepts from Motorola's pioneering efforts in developing the RapidIO interconnect standard, Motorola's OCeaN (on-chip network) crossbar switch fabric provides cross-sectional bandwidth of up to 22Gbit/s peak bandwidth per port, together with independent transaction queuing and flow control.

This switch fabric implementation is designed to enable high bandwidth, high performance on-chip communication and to allow for the execution of multiple simultaneous data transactions.

Including Layer 2 acceleration and Jumbo frame support, two full duplex Gigabit Ethernet interfaces are engineered to provide dataflow flexibility and easy connectivity for high-speed backplane or forwarding solutions.

With a DDR SDRAM controller designed to provide up to 333MHz on a 64bit dedicated bus with EEC support, customers can add up to 3.5Gbyte of system memory - increasing system performance, reliability and functionality.

Legacy support is enabled through an integrated 64bit PCI-X controller, enabling easy connectivity to a variety of industry standard peripherals.

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