Freescale Demonstrates Breakthrough Quad-Core ARM® Applications Processor

Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE: FSL) kicked off the 2011 Freescale Technology Forum Americas in high energy fashion today by demonstrating one of the industry’s highest-performance quad-core applications processors. The forum’s opening keynote presentation featured a live demonstration presenting the multimedia capabilities of Freescale’s i.MX 6Quad applications processor.

Engineered to deliver unbounded consumer experiences, the i.MX 6 series scales from one to four CPU cores to deliver optimal headroom for many of today’s hottest consumer electronics applications. Pin-compatible between family members, the i.MX 6 series devices are built on ARM® Cortex™-A9 cores with an array of integrated IP to deliver outstanding performance and scalability for manufacturers targeting tablet, eReader, automotive infotainment and other smart mobile device spaces.

“Freescale unveiled plans for the i.MX 6 series at the 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show, and six months later we are pleased to demonstrate first-rev working silicon for this exceptionally sophisticated product,” said Bernd Lienhard, vice president and general manager of Freescale’s Multimedia Applications Division. “Execution has been outstanding and our customers can look forward to the scalability, performance and energy efficiency of our compelling new family of high-performance applications processors.”

About the i.MX 6 series

The i.MX 6 series is comprised of the single-core i.MX 6Solo, dual-core i.MX 6Dual and quad-core i.MX 6Quad processor families. Product capabilities include dual-stream 1080p H.264 video processing for 3D class video decoding, Freescale’s triple play graphics architecture consisting of console-style 3D graphics with 200MT/s, separate 2D BLT engine for UI acceleration and separate 2D OpenVG engine for vector-based graphics.

For ultimate system design flexibility, the i.MX 6 series offers a broad array of features including:

• One-, two- and four-core offerings
• Display support for up to two (dual QXGA, 2048 x 1536) or four (dual WUXGA, 1920x1200 + dual HD1080) simultaneous displays
• Triple play graphics architecture with three physically separate graphic engines to best optimize gaming, UI and control-related graphics
• DDR3/LP-DDR2, BGA / POP packaging, PCIe/SATA/GbE, USB/SD/MIPI, CAN controller / MLB150 bus, LVDS
• 64-bit memory bus

Common SoC IP building blocks enable series-wide software and development tool compatibility, while integrated power management capabilities, a broad range of integrated I/Os and pin compatibility within package families reduce overall product complexity and development costs. Support for PC supply chain peripherals includes DDR3, 0.8 mm pitch packaging, PCIe, SATA and GbE, and operating system support offered for Google® Android™, QNX®, Linux and Microsoft®.