Based on Freescale's e600 PowerPC core, the MPC7448 represents the most significant update to the MPC74xx family of processors to date and is expected to offer speeds from 600 MHz to 1.7 GHz with the system bus running up to 200 MHz.
The MPC7448 is also the first product in the MPC74xx family to use Freescale's 90 nanometer (nm) silicon-on-insulator (SOI) CMOS process, which will significantly increases clock and bus speeds while reducing power requirements.
Running much cooler than its predecessor, the MPC7448 offers GHz-class performance at less than 10 Watts, the company said. The MPC7448 power management features also include nap and sleep modes and introduce dynamic frequency switching that permits system software to reduce power "on the fly...."
"The MPC7448 is a seamless step up in performance that demonstrates Freescale's continued commitment to developing compatible high-performance PowerPC processors for the embedded market," the company said in a statement. It is also a stepping stone to the MPC8641D dual-core processor based on the same e600 PowerPC core.
According to Freescale documents, the MPC7448 and MPC8641D PowerPC G4 processors share many architectural similarities that make them highly compatible, including support for asymmetric and symmetric multiprocessing, identical 32KB L1 cache and 1MB L2 cache, and identical AltiVec technology attributes and performance.
Additionally the same customer application binary code can run on the MPC7448 and MPC8641D, meaning Apple could adopt the dual-core G4 chip for its mobile offerings down the line. However, by the time Freescale begins mass-producing the MPC8641D, Apple will likely be ready to debut a dual-core PowerBook based on Intel's Yonah mobile processor.
In the meantime, Freescale said the MPC7448 -- which has been sampling since February -- is planned to be in full production in October 2005. The chip will likely begin showing up in Apple laptop-based systems shortly thereafter, offering a substantial increase in battery performance and slight speed boost over today's systems.
According to EEMBC (Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium) certified performance benchmark tests, a 1.7GHz MPC7448 scored a 350.8 in the DENbench suite "out-of-the-box," while AltiVec engine optimization helped double application performance to 762.0.
I just looked up the iBook's video card. It is an "ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 graphics processor with 32MB of dedicated video memory and AGP 4X support," and ATI clearly shows that the Radeon 9200 includes "Multi-display support for CRT monitor, TV or Digital Flat Panel."
