Freescale Networks on 16nm

AUSTIN, Texas — Freescale’s next generation of multicore processors will use 16nm FinFET process technology, officials announced at the company’s annual conference, Freescale Technology Forum (Wednesday, June 24). Two QorIQ chips, LS1048A and LS1088A, are designed for Internet of Things networking at the edge.

The new QorIQ have eight 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 cores running at 1.5 GHz with 2 Megabytes or L2 cache and support for DDR4 SRAM. Freescale did not say which fab would manufacture the new process node, but promised 16nm in mid-2016.
“The world’s networks are moving and changing faster than ever before, driven by the convergence of extreme virtualization, software-centric network topologies, continued expansion of the IoT, and growing demand for increased, flexible intelligence at the network’s edge,” Tom Deitrich, senior vice president and general manager of Freesale’s digital networking group, said in a release.
There are tens of watts in a single networking SoC, Freescale Digital Networking Manager Stuart Forbes told EE Times, so 16nm technology will provide twice the performance of 28nm with a similar power envelope. As a result, the new cores will have improved ARM capabilities and power architecture while being able to support StarCore digital signal processing chips (DSP).
QorIQ also has hardware acceleration in its layer one logic “to include LTE-Advanced capabilities…[and] power benefits,” Forbes said. He added that packet and security acceleration are also key components in Freescale’s 16nm vision.
Freescale’s 16nm platform will be supplemented with operating systems and BSPs from partner networks. The company does not have plans for 10nm technology, and Forbes said the following generation of process technology will not follow mobile trends directly. It will likely be several years before 16nm technology makes it to Freescale microcontrollers because of difficulties implementing flash and analog in lower-level technologies.

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326967