Freescale ColdFire

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Coldfire MCF5204
Freescale Coldfire MCF5272VM66

Freescale ColdFire is the name of a RISC microcontroller architecture that was derived from the Motorola 68000 family . These processors are now sold by the semiconductor division Freescale Semiconductor , which was spun off in July 2004 .

The Coldfire processors have some special features, which are explained by their special focus on the market for embedded systems . This particularly includes the modular structure.

architecture

A subset of the 68k instruction set is implemented in the Coldfire processors. Up to and including the core of the fourth generation, users had to get along without MMU and FPU , in the 4e (e = enhanced) and the core of the fifth generation, these are to be implemented.

In addition to the CPU core, this microprocessor has a configurable 2 KB instruction and data cache as well as a MAC functional unit. The latter can perform integer operations that are roughly comparable in speed to a DSP . The MCF5282 is operated at 66  MHz , resulting in 59  MIPS . The entire circuit requires 3.3  V DC power supply . Due to the low power consumption, the processor hardly heats up, so no special cooling is required.

Newer Coldfire processors have an integrated USB host controller (USB 2.0), DDR memory interface, a PCI interface, Ethernet controller and other built-in extensions. By mid-2005 they should be available with clock rates of 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 telecommunications system series from Siemens , the process control modules HIMatrix from HIMA and the Coolfire platform from the Austrian gaming machine manufacturer Novomatic .

Coldfire on the desktop

A motherboard based on the Coldfire and compatible with the Atari ST is now available under the name Firebee . The other Atari-typical custom chips are reproduced in an FPGA . The speed of the Firebee roughly corresponds to that of a 68060 CPU with 266 MHz. An expansion card has also been introduced for Amiga computers, but was never really functional and therefore never appeared in stores. In contrast to the Atari, the only partial compatibility with the 68k software is more important with the Amiga, since the legal and actual requirements for a recompilation are not available. On the other hand, the development of 68k compatible soft cores has advanced. A Coldfire extension was considered for the NatAmi project, but was rejected due to the problems mentioned. The basic problem of all development is also that no processors with the V5 core are available on the open market, because these are only sold to a few major customers.

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