Contributors: Bob Wheeler, Jag Bolaria, Joseph Byrne, Michael Stanford In This Issue
A Guide to High-Speed Embedded Processors is now available. This report covers general-purpose processors at 400MHz and above that target high-end consumer gear. Click here for more details. Shiva Destroys Performance Barriers Marvell today announced a new family of processors for consumer applications, the 88F6000. These products are based on Marvell’s Shiva CPU, an ARM-compatible design that is also used in the new Discovery Innovation processors for enterprise and SMB. Marvell claims that the Shiva CPU will reach 2.0GHz, although most of its initial products are rated at 600MHz to 1.2GHz. With dual-issue and instruction-reordering capabilities, Shiva should outperform all other ARM CPUs and most MIPS CPUs. Despite their strong CPU performance, the 88F6000 products offer impressively low power dissipation, rated at 2.0W at 2.0GHz and 1.2W at 800MHz. To minimize system cost, the new products include a broad set of consumer interfaces, such as a high-speed USB port with integrated PHY, one or two Ethernet ports, one or two serial ATA ports, TDM, plus audio and video interfaces. Marvell did not announce pricing, but we estimate the chip’s list price ranges from $20 to $40, depending on the speed grade and peripheral set. The new products are already sampling, with production planned for 3Q08. Using its earlier Orion processors, Marvell has quietly gained a foothold in 802.11n routers and consumer NAS units. The 88F6000 offers much more performance than Orion and greater integration while maintaining low cost and power, making it an excellent choice for performance-hungry consumer designs such as set-top boxes and VDSL/PON gateways. —Linley Complete coverage of Marvell’s Shiva processors appears in our new report A Guide to High-Speed Embedded Processors. Last week, Via took the wraps off its Isaiah processor, now marketed as Nano. As promised, the new CPU doubles the per-clock performance of the older C7, aided by a more advanced microarchitecture, a big increase in L2 cache size, and a move to 65nm technology. At clock speeds up to 1.8GHz, Nano offers a drop-in upgrade for C7 boards, with slightly higher power (TDP). Although much benchmarking remains to be done, it appears that Nano will deliver per-MHz performance close to that of Intel’s Pentium-M CPU. This implies that Nano will handily outperform Atom. In fact, the C7 is a better match against Atom on a clock-for-clock basis. The Nano instead matches up in performance with Intel’s single-CPU Celeron-M products. Via did not announce pricing for Nano, but we expect it will significantly undercut the $86 pricing for Celeron-M. Smashing the Atom is a more difficult problem. The 1.86GHz Atom has a list price of $160, easily beatable by Via. But the 1.1GHz Atom lists for just $45, including system logic. Via will try to position the 1.0GHz C7 against this Atom but will have to cut prices significantly to get below $45. Furthermore, Atom has a TDP of 4W, versus 7W for the C7+CX700 combo and 9W for the lowest-power Nano+VX800 chip set. For mobile devices such as MIDs and UMPCs, Atom’s low power dissipation gives it a battery-life advantage. But for designers that are more concerned about price than power, Via will continue to be the low-price leader. The new Nano products stretch Via’s line to new performance points, allowing it to fully compete against Celeron-M in embedded x86 applications. —Linley Complete coverage of Via’s Nano processor appears in our new report A Guide to High-Speed Embedded Processors. Ubicom today announced its newest processor, the Stream Engine 7000. The 7000 clocks about 40% faster than the earlier 5000-series parts, which are popular in 802.11n routers. Other upgrades include bumping the second Ethernet port to one gigabit, increasing on-chip memory, and adding DSP instructions. The new DSP instructions will help Ubicom address multimedia applications such as digital photo frames. To mitigate concerns about its unique architecture, Ubicom announced a Posix layer for its software stack. This layer allows OEMs to port Unix user-mode applications to the Stream Engine processors, enabling new features such as CIFS/SMB support for network-attached storage and printers. —Joe Additional coverage of Ubicom’s Stream Engine appears in our report A Guide to Communications Processors. Last week, Freescale announced the i.MX37, the first new product in this line in nearly two years. The company plans to completely revise its line with additional announcements later this year. The new processor upgrades the older i.MX27 to an ARM11 CPU at up to 532MHz. Using 65nm technology, the chip cuts video-playback power in half, needing just 130mW for VGA decode at 30fps. The new chip adds TV out and updates the interfaces. It is due to enter production this fall. The i.MX37 should help Freescale maintain its success in personal media players such as the Microsoft Zune and Toshiba Gigabeat. —Linley Additional coverage of Freescale’s i.MX line appears in our report A Guide to Wireless Handset Processors.
The demand for high-speed processors continues to grow as market opportunities abound for these speedy chips. These devices are ideal for handling the complex functions required by high-end consumer devices such as VDSL and PON gateways, digital media servers, home NAS servers, and set-top boxes. These applications share a need for speed but also the flexibility that a general-purpose processor provides. These chips use standard instruction sets such as MIPS, PowerPC, ARM, and x86, allowing programmers to use a wide variety of operating systems and development tools. This completely revised report provides extensive coverage of high-end embedded processors from a mix of old and new vendors, featuring AMCC, AMD, Broadcom, Cavium, Freescale, IBM, Intel, Marvell, PMC-Sierra, RMI, and Via Technologies. This edition covers all the recent announcements, such as Intel’s Atom and Tolapai, Marvell’s Shiva processors, AMCC’s PowerPC 405EX, and Via’s Nano. It also provides up-to-date product roadmaps as well as market share and market size data for the embedded segments covered. See how increasing levels of integration make these processors better suited to consumer devices. Learn how multicore and multithreading technologies are impacting embedded applications. The Linley Group provides the technology analysis you need to make informed business decisions. Special offer: order by June 13 using promotion code "LCE" and save $300 on A Guide to High-Speed Embedded Processors. For more information, including the table of contents, visit our web site. To receive Linley on CE via e-mail, you must register on our web site
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