Freescale Semiconductor Inc. took some of the wraps off of its dual-core microprocessor design, which the company said would be tailored to embedded applications.
The MPC8641D contains a pair of the company's e600 PowerPC cores, designed to deliver greater than 1.5-GHz performance. Freescale did not reveal all of the technical details of the MPC8641D, however; those disclosures will be saved for the Fall Processor Forum next week in San Jose, hosted by analyst firm In-Stat/MDR. Freescale announced the MPC8641D at a trade show in Germany on Tuesday morning.
Most of the speculation around dual-core PowerPCs has been focused around the other PowerPC license holder, IBM. However, Austin's Freescale – formerly the semiconductor division of Motorola Inc. – will apparently be first out of the gate with a dual-core PowerPC part. Apple Computer Inc. currently sources its microprocessors from IBM, but the computer maker has been used chips from both suppliers in the past
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