APM 83290 First to Offer 1.5GHz Power Architecture® Multi-core Processor in
Low-Cost Bulk CMOS Technology
SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(Business Wire)--
Applied Micro Circuits Corporation (NASDAQ:AMCC), or AppliedMicro, a global
leader in energy conscious computing and communications solutions, today
announced the first member of its APM 83K series System on Chip (SoC) family:
APM 83290 - the highest performance Power Architecture® solution available in
bulk CMOS process. Designed from the ground-up to achieve industry leading
speeds comparable to designs manufactured in expensive Silicon-on-Insulator
processes, the APM 83290 SoC provides a level of price flexibility that makes it
attractive to a wider range of systems. The APM 83290 also features proprietary
PacketPro and MultiEase technologies developed from AppliedMicro`s extensive
networking and processing experience for a device that delivers the best
performance for wireless infrastructure, enterprise, storage, entertainment,
multifunction printer and communications applications.
The APM 83290 includes a processor subsystem that integrates two Titan cores
based on Power Architecture technology, delivering frequencies of 1.5 GHz per
core. The Titan core is a superscalar, dual-issue, out-of-order core designed to
achieve industry leading single thread performance on a per clock basis. Along
with high performance, innovative circuit design techniques enable the APM 83290
to deliver speeds of 1.5 GHz in 90nm bulk CMOS while comparable designs require
45nm SOI process technology to achieve similar operating speeds. This
combination of performance and price flexibility makes this solution attractive
for many low cost application areas that traditionally were not serviced by
Power Architecture products.
The APM 83290`s PacketPro consists of a number of acceleration blocks designed
to offload the processor subsystem from commonly occurring tasks in networking
applications. A fundamental component of PacketPro is a message passing
architecture that simplifies data movement between the various acceleration
blocks and provides Quality of Service guarantees for each flow regardless of
the loading from other flows. This Quality of Service is guaranteed via a
powerful and flexible Queue Manager and Traffic Manager (QMTM) block. Instead of
using isolated operation offloads, the acceleration blocks are designed to
offload entire protocol level tasks in order to reduce processing overhead and
increase application performance. These blocks are fully software programmable
in order to support proprietary features and provide upgradability for future
protocol enhancements.
"Instead of simply throwing extraneous general purpose CPU cores into a chip,
we`ve developed dedicated silicon blocks to offload the most challenging system
tasks and ensure that the APM 83K family of SoCs delivers more efficient
power/performance ratios for our customers` applications," said Robert Fanfelle,
Associate Vice President of Strategic Marketing for AppliedMicro. "PacketPro
technology enables efficient packet processing and fair sharing of bandwidth
amongst flows allowing our powerful multi-core processor subsystem to
concentrate its resources on executing customer applications."
AppliedMicro`s MultiEase technology allows customers to reduce development
efforts and accelerate their time to market schedules by providing
virtualization of on-chip resources, fault isolation debug and error recovery.
This allows customers to easily migrate applications originally developed for
single core microprocessor systems into a multi-core environment. In addition,
the APM 83K series is code compatible with PowerPC products, giving developers
the flexibility to leverage their software development efforts and tool sets
into new multi-core applications.
"Our customers have put many years into fine tuning and honing their software
for single-core environments and they want to preserve their investment yet
still take advantage of next generation multi-core processors," Fanfelle said.
"With MultiEase, our customers can avoid having to fundamentally redesign their
software simply to work in a multi-core shared-resource environment. The
customer can ease his transition by controlling the amount of resource sharing
and optimization for their particular mix of applications, in turn improving
product reliability and time-to-market."
"Converged network applications represent a rapidly growing portion of today`s
$3.3 billion high-speed embedded processor market," said Linley Gwennap,
principal analyst of The Linley Group and coauthor of a new report on embedded
processors. "AppliedMicro has extensive experience with packet processing, which
is a key function for processors in these networking applications. The APM 83K
series with PacketPro is company`s best effort yet for combining its embedded
processor technology with its networking experience, giving AppliedMicro an
advantage in this large and growing market."
The hardware features of the APM 83290 SoC include dual Titan cores, each with a
floating point unit, 512KB of shared L2 Cache memory with ECC support, full
hardware memory and I/O coherency, 64-bit DDR2 SDRAM interface, security
acceleration for IPSec, SSL, Kasumi, SNOW3G and public-key protocols. Other
features include a classification engine, multi-channel DMA engine, and high
speed interfaces for Gigabit Ethernet ports, IEEE1588v2 support, PCI Express
v2.0, Serial RapidIO, USB and SATA.
Availability
Applied Micro`s APM 83290 is available now in sample quantities with production
quantities expected in Q1 2010.
AppliedMicro Overview
AppliedMicro is a global leader in energy efficient sustainable solutions to
process, transport, and store information for the next generation of Internet
data center and carrier central office. A leader in high speed signal
processing, IP and Ethernet packet processing, and embedded processors,
AppliedMicro's patented innovations provide high value solutions in telecom,
enterprise and consumer applications. AppliedMicro's corporate headquarters are
located in Sunnyvale, California. Sales and engineering offices are located
throughout the world. For further information regarding AppliedMicro, visit the
company`s Web site at http://www.appliedmicro.com.
AppliedMicro and the AppliedMicro logo are registered trademarks of Applied
Micro Circuits Corporation, Inc. PacketPro and MultiEase are trademarks of
Applied Micro Circuits Corporation, Inc. The Power Architecture and Power.org
word marks and the Power and Power.org logos and related marks are trademarks
and service marks licensed by Power.org. All other product or service names are
the property of their respective owners.
AppliedMicro
Tally Kaplan Porat, (o) 408-702-3139
(c) 408-483-8370
tkaplan@amcc.com
or
The Bernard Group
Tom Murphy, (o) 831-661-0260 (Media)
(c) 831-402-4142
tmurphy@bernardgroup.com
Copyright Business Wire 2009
