Freescale Qorivva (POWER Architecture) - Who uses this and why?

Other Hardware 3rd Party Boards
1

Anyone know anything about this architecture? It seems that Freescale continues to develop it. Here is the latest generation, only a few parts so far:

Prior generations, many many parts available:

Obviously this platform is a big deal for Freescale. It's clearly a high-end solution. With ARM taking the high-end microcontroller world, I wonder why Freescale keeps developing this. Is this so well entrenched in the auto market that automakers are going to keep using it? Anyone know anything about it? I'd love to here what this platform is all about. I thought POWER was more or less dead years ago.

2

I don't use Freescale chips, but I do use the Powerpc architecture all of the time. I work at IBM on the GCC compiler for the powerpc architecture. At present, our current released server machines are power7/power7+ with a lot of work for the new power8 server platform that will be coming.

In addition to automotive field, I know powerpc also had design wins for set top boxes. But since I don't track that end of the market, I don't know who the major customers using the embedded powerpc boards are.

3

So they talk about the technology being "e200" for the microcontrollers that I linked and "e500" for these:

e600 for these:

Totally different naming than Power7 or Power8. Is it fair to say that IBM and Freescale's development of POWER has completely diverged?

4

JoeN:
Totally different naming than Power7 or Power8. Is it fair to say that IBM and Freescale's development of POWER has completely diverged?

There is coordination, at higher levels, and both camps contribute to the shared GCC port.

5

The PPC gained a significant following in a bunch of market segments while the ARM was still an infant.
Don't forget that Apple Macs were based on PPC chips for quite a while. Also, lots of internet communications gear (routers, modems, and such.)

I'm not sure how freescale can survive selling three different 32bit processor cores (ARM, PPC, 68k), but even "tiny" Atmel has two (AVR32 and ARM), so perhaps it's not that difficult.

6

westfw:
I'm not sure how freescale can survive selling three different 32bit processor cores (ARM, PPC, 68k), but even "tiny" Atmel has two (AVR32 and ARM), so perhaps it's not that difficult.

And they have this 32-bit product too which I don't quite understand:

http://www.freescale.com/files/dsp/doc/prod_brief/MC56F847XPB.pdf

The 56F844x/5x/7x is the initial family of 32-bit 56800EX core–based Digital Signal Controllers (DSCs). Each device in the family combines, on a single chip, the processing power of a 32-bit DSP and the functionality of a microcontroller with a flexible set of peripherals. Due to its cost-effectiveness, configuration flexibility, and compact program code, the 56F844x/5x/7x is well-suited for many consumer and industrial applications.

Is this another 32-bit architecture? It sure seems like it.