Freescale ColdFire

Freescale Coldfire denotes a RISC microcontroller architecture that has been derived from the Motorola 68000 family. Meanwhile, these processors are sold by the outsourced in July 2004 Semiconductor, Freescale Semiconductor.

The ColdFire processors have some special features, which can be explained by the special focus on the market for embedded systems. This includes in particular the modular structure.

Architecture

In the ColdFire processors a subset of the 68k instruction set is implemented. Up to and including the core of the fourth generation had users without MMU and FPU commented, in 4e (e = enhanced) and the nucleus of the fifth generation they should be implemented.

In addition to the CPU core of this microprocessor has a configurable 2 KB instruction and data cache, and a MAC function unit. The latter may perform integer operations that are roughly comparable in the speed with a DSP. The MCF5282 is operated at 66 MHz, this results in 59 MIPS. The complete circuit requires 3.3 V DC power supply. Due to the low power consumption the processor is hardly heated, so no special cooling is required.

Newer ColdFire processors have a built-in USB host controller ( USB 2.0), DDR memory interface, a PCI interface, Ethernet controllers, and other built-in extensions. By mid-2005 it should be available with clock speeds up to 266 MHz and an instruction throughput of up to 410 MIPS.

Use

Embedded ColdFire

Prominent examples of the use of a ColdFire were the d -box 1, Metabox 1000 and the HiPath 3000 PBX series of Siemens, the process control modules HIMatrix of HIMA and the Cool Fire platform of the Austrian Novomatic slot machine manufacturer.

ColdFire on the desktop

Under the name " Firebee " has become a work based on the ColdFire Atari ST compatible motherboard available. The remaining Atari typical custom chips are modeled in an FPGA. The speed of the Firebee roughly equivalent to that of a 68060 CPU with 266 MHz. An expansion card has been presented for the Amiga computer, but was never really functional, and is therefore never released commercially. Unlike the Atari drops the Amiga stronger the only partial compatibility with the 68k software such weight as the legal and factual requirements for a recompilation is not available, on the other hand, the development of 68k compatible soft cores made ​​progress. When NatAmi project a ColdFire extension was considered due to the problems mentioned but rejected again. Basic problem of all development is that no processors are available on the open market with the V5 core, because these are only sold to a few large customers.

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