SCIENCE

Freescale Semiconductor plans to incorporate its proven and highly successful AltiVec vector processing technology into the multicore QorIQ product family.

AltiVec addresses high-bandwidth data processing and algorithmic-intensive computations, delivering DSP-level performance for control and data path processing tasks. Benchmarks conducted by the Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium (EEMBC) have demonstrated 10x performance improvements with AltiVec technology.

QorIQ products featuring AltiVec technology are expected to deliver dramatic performance and energy efficiency boosts for a wide range of applications including the wireless infrastructure, networking, aerospace, military, industrial, robotics, storage, medical, video systems and printing markets.

“Incorporating AltiVec technology into future QorIQ products is expected to deliver distinct performance benefits for our customers, while further demonstrating the advantages of Freescale’s highly advanced approach to embedded multicore,” said Brett Butler, vice president and general manager of the Networking Processor Division at Freescale. “AltiVec’s performance has long been recognized for the value it delivers to the industry and we are pleased to introduce it into the QorIQ product roadmap.”

AltiVec extends Power Architecture technology to leverage single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) vector processing. AltiVec technology adds more than 180 instructions that operate concurrently with scalar integer and floating-point instructions. The additional instructions provide inter- and intra-vector integer and floating-point arithmetic, as well as powerful logical, conditional, permutation, and data movement functions. The rich AltiVec technology instruction set enables highly power-efficient processing capabilities for a broad spectrum of markets.

“Freescale’s decision to incorporate proven AltiVec technology into its QorIQ product family makes QorIQ an attractive choice for a wide range of markets,” said Joseph Byrne, senior analyst at The Linley Group and chairman of the Linley Technology Processor Conference. “This move is good news for QorIQ customers and the larger embedded community.”

To help developers take advantage of the performance benefits of AltiVec technology, Freescale offers multiple downloadable ‘C’ libraries of AltiVec technology-enabled functions. Freescale also plans broad internal and third party development support for QorIQ products incorporating AltiVec technology.

Supporting quotes from Freescale partners follow

Enea: “Performance requirements continue to grow more demanding in networking and other markets, and Freescale’s enhanced AltiVec technology offers compelling functionality to help meet this demand,” said Marcus Hjortsberg, vice president of Product Marketing for Enea. “Our shared customers can look to Enea to deliver comprehensive development solutions that optimize and unleash the full capabilities of QorIQ products featuring AltiVec technology.”

Green Hills Software: “For over 10 years, Green Hills has been delivering optimized support for Freescale’s AltiVec acceleration engine and we look forward to providing these solutions to expanding markets with Freescale,” said Dan Mender, vice president of Business Development for Green Hills Software. “The Green Hills C/C++ compilers for AltiVec are flexible and easy to use, giving designers fine control over the level of optimizations and performance – ranging from utilizing AltiVec datatypes and instructions to automated code vectorization."

Mentor Graphics: "As Freescale advances its QorIQ product roadmap with AltiVec technology for multicore applications, Mentor Embedded solutions for Linux, Nucleus, and developer tools will integrate this technology to benefit our mutual customers," said Glenn Perry, general manager for Mentor Graphics Embedded Software Division. "Together with Mentor, Freescale’s customers can fully leverage the high performance and low power operation that QorIQ processors deliver for today's multicore applications."

Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing: “The incorporation of AltiVec into the QorIQ family offers significant benefits for our customers,” said Lynn Bamford, vice president and general manager of Modular Solutions, Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing. “We strongly endorse this move and will work closely with Freescale to help our customers fully leverage the outstanding performance of AltiVec technology for the aerospace and defense markets that we serve.”

Emerson Network Power: “Applications with high data throughput requirements will greatly benefit from the incorporation of AltiVec into QorIQ products,” said Paul Virgo, marketing director, Embedded Computing for Emerson Network Power. “QorIQ provides a tightly coupled memory and high-speed I/O subsystem with multi-core AltiVec functionality within embedded power budgets that we anticipate will be adopted quickly by our customers. This is the right technology direction at the right time.”

GE Intelligent Platforms: “GE Intelligent Platforms has committed to supporting current and future generations of Freescale’s QorIQ processors,” said Rob McKeel, general manager of Military & Aerospace Embedded Computing at GE Intelligent Platforms. “The inclusion of AltiVec technology unquestionably strengthens the appeal of QorIQ to us, and will certainly be well received by our customers.”

Mercury Computer Systems: “Mercury and Freescale have a long track record of collaborating to drive innovation within the defense, commercial, and other markets,” said Steve Patterson, vice president of Defense Product Line Management at Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. "As part of its continuing leadership in digital signal and image processing applications, Mercury enthusiastically endorses the direction Freescale is taking with AltiVec.”

Wind River Software: “Wind River’s customers in the networking, aerospace, defense and industrial market segments using QorIQ processors with the latest AltiVec technology will have access to world-class development solutions thanks to Wind River’s broad portfolio of embedded software offerings," said Marc Brown, vice president of Marketing and Strategy for VxWorks Products at Wind River. "We are committed to supporting our joint customers using the latest AltiVec vector processing technology and ensuring their success in competitive markets.”