AUSTIN, Tex. -- Motorola Inc. today announced its fastest PowerPC processor yet, the MPC7455, which is fabricated with silicon-on-insulator technology and operating at 1-GHz speeds. A slower, lower-power version of the SOI processor, the MPC7445, is also being offered at speeds up to 800 MHz.
Aimed at networking and computing applications, the new SOI processors have already won a major account. Sweden's LM Ericsson plans to use the MPC7445 chip in cellular infrastructure equipment for general packet radio service (GPRS) backbone systems, said Motorola.
The MPC7455 PowerPC is housed in a 484-pin CBGA package, reaching speeds of 1 GHz with a core voltage of 1.6 volts. The MPC7455 integrates a 256-kilobyte on-chip L2 cache with support of up to 2 Mbyte backside L3 cache. The MPC7445 is housed a 360-pin CBGA package and designed to operate at lower consumption while running at up to 800 MHz on a core voltage of 1.3 V.
The faster MPC7455 is shipping today, and the lower-power consuming MPC7445 is now sampling, said Motorola. Pricing for the 800-MHz MPC7445 has been set at $125 each in quantities of 10,000. The 1-GHz MPC755 has a suggested retail price of $295 in similar quantities.
