Communications processors support ZigBee 2006

The PowerQuicc series of communications processors from Freescale Semiconductor has evolved over many years. The latest generation of devices, PowerQuicc III, meets the needs of broadband-network-infrastructure equipment, such as 3G- or next-generation cellular or WiMax base stations. The company

shaped the device's features to handle the multiprotocol-interworking tasks in applications such as gateways and ATM (asynchronous-transfer-mode), TDM (time-division-multiplexing), and IP (Internet Protocol) equipment, in which packet-based IP traffic coexists with legacy formats.

This release encompasses the MPC8568E and MPC 8567E, both including a Power Architecture (Power PC) core from the e500 series and supporting clock speeds as high as 1.33 GHz. The core has 512 kbytes of Level 2 cache and has a benchmark performance of as many as 3000 Dhrystone MIPS. It communicates with the outside world through on-chip Gigabit Ethernet, PCI Express, and Serial RapidIO interfaces. The E designation in the part numbers indicates that both chips have hardware-security features that support the execution of a range of encryption algorithms on the fly.

New in the III series is the Quicc engine, a programmable-function block that provides hardware acceleration of the primitive operations specific to communications protocols, such as ATM, POS (Packet over SONET), Ethernet, PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol), HDLC (High-Level Data-Link Control), and TDM, offloading the general-purpose Power Architecture core. The chip also includes a table-look-up unit, a DDR memory controller, and a hardware floating-point unit. Freescale provides standard microcode for established protocols and downloadable updates for new and evolving ones. Development is on the CodeWarrior software platform. The chips will cost $100.80 (10,000).

Addressing the slower end of the data-communications-speed range, Freescale's Jon Adams, director of radio technology and strategy in the company's wireless- and mobile-systems group, comments on the recent revision to the ZigBee specification: "The changes the ZigBee Alliance [ www.zigbee.org ] has made are essential to allow ZigBee deployment as the alliance intended. The revision process focused on the top four issues that developers had identified." For example, although the ZigBee outline specification in principle allows for 216 nodes, a network could in practice handle only those networks with 100 or fewer nodes. The changes, which include modifications to the procedures for address allocation, extend that capability to allow ZigBee to handle thousands of nodes, which, Adams says, real-world industrial networks will require.

Other changes improve areas such as security; Adams believes that ZigBee product development will soon enjoy a new impetus, with activities beyond the technology market. These activities could include progress on branding for products at the consumer level. The ZigBee Alliance has discussed the merits of a single ZigBee brand as opposed to brand identification specific to different product sectors. Freescale has a variety of ZigBee products: both separate radio and baseband architectures and "single-package" offerings. The company declines to disclose whether the single package is a single RF and baseband die or a multichip package. The company also sells 802.15.4 products without the ZigBee protocol stack if you want to develop a proprietary device or an even more basic 802.15.4 radio offering. Free scale is about to announce a ZigBee software stack that it has developed entirely in-house. (The company previously used a third-party product.) The new stack will fully comply with the 2006 revision. A bill-of-materials cost for this ZigBee module will be $4 to $4.50 (10,000).

Freescale Semiconductor , www.freescale.com .