After acquisition of Freescale we need a boost to hurry!...

[Raffaele_Megabyte]

I said it so in the title, as it seems to me that new owners of Freescale want that the company must focus its efforts only on ARM design and projects, and leave PPC development, just continuing selling existing line of Powerr processors without any further advance of CPU design...

I hope that in six months the project will reach an advanced state of the art, and starting being known all around in computing scene to make a signal to information technology world that there is people who work for inverting actual descending trend of PPC platform.

[Casper]

I hope NXP doesn't stop PPC development, our only other option would be to use low-end POWER8 CPU's (I think the slowest POWER8 CPU's are quad core processors at 2.5GHz, and while that sounds great, I don't know if that kind of power consumption is warranted in a laptop.

[Carlos]

In the future there is only one POWER/ PowerPC manufacture left. It will be IBM (and thrid parties).
I fear, the heat dissipation of a POWER CPU is too high for a notebook, but a stripped down version of it should fit.

[Casper]

Some other PowerPC manufacturers still exist in China like Suzhou Powercore and C*Core.
But one can wonder if, along with further die-shrinks a quad-core Power9 or maybe Power10 system could be crammed into a laptop. It might need some special engineering, but maybe with a low-enough clock speed and a powerful enough fan system, it might be accomplished. I don't know how practical it would be.

Or we could just ask NXP what their plans are for their PowerPC line. That would help us and the Amiga guys in the future as well (since they are just now switching to Freescale CPU's). I don't know if they'd be willing to disclose such information, but maybe they can give a hint if they will develop the line further or cease production in favor of ARM later.

[Carlos]

My fear is, that these PowerPC manufacturers don't have the brainpower to develop a fitting notebook chip. If I'm right, they only "copied" existing POWER8 designs. Corrected me, if I'm wrong.

Maybe we could license QorIQ from NXP. But it's little bit expensive and no future development.

[Carlos]

Yesterday Newswire released an article about NXP QorIQ:

PowerPC AltiVec is back with Aitech Defense Systems newest SBC

Maybe there is a little future left ;-)

[Casper]

Well, as longs as military contractors keep using the PowerPC systems, maybe NXP will further develop the chips since they are a steady stream of revenue.

Funny how the army might save a platform useful for free software/hardware.

[Carlos]

Don't hang your hopes too high
The military industry is not known as a driving force in chip development. The opposite is true. It has to be bullet proof

[Casper]

XD, they do might want backwards compatibility in their systems. I don't think they want to switch architecture too often, but newer developments in technology will eventually need new chips.

We could still try to contact NXP what the deal is with their QorIq PPC line and if they will continue it. Come to think of it, their HQ isn't THAT far from where I live 

[Carlos]

Then go for it. I'm with you
But I don't think, they will tell you such details
Not to mention, that they don't even know what they will do next month, next year and so on

[Casper]

I don't think they'll let anyone without an appointment waltz in 
I do remember seeing a slide of NXP with plans for a successor to the e6500 core to come out around 2015-2016, but as of now, nothing has been made public. I really hope they make a new core since power/performance/price wise, those Freescale cores are still the best option.

[Carlos]

Are you sure it was from NXP? More likely Freescale.
From NXP I have seen no slides regarding new PowerPC SOCs

[Casper]

It was branded NXP, but it could be the slides were from the Freescale days and NXP just slapped their logo on it.

http://www.nxp.com/files/training/doc/dwf/DWF13_APF_NET_T0795.pdf

As I thought, Freescale slides, just with the NXP logo on top.

[cyrano]

PowerPC chips are being used a lot in the embedded market. Things like routers, cable modems, flight controllers and car engine controllers. These are the clients that will make sure the PPC design is still around in 10 years.

These are also the kind of buyers who order quantities that'll make it feasible to get a custom die, made to their specs and unavailable on the open market.

I sincerely hope the team has already sourced the processor. Some of these can be True Unobtanium®...

For instance, the ARM SOC powering the Raspberry Pi can only be bought in minimum quantities of one million. For the defense industry, buying one million PPC chips isn't a problem at all, even if they need only 10.000. A typical dual core VME board will set the army back around 5.000 US$, excluding support. And that's for an SBC, so just a single PCB with a maybe 1 GHz processor and 512 MB ram. Not what we would consider "high end".

[Carlos]

It was branded NXP, but it could be the slides were from the Freescale days and NXP just slapped their logo on it.

http://www.nxp.com/files/training/doc/dwf/DWF13_APF_NET_T0795.pdf

As I thought, Freescale slides, just with the NXP logo on top.

Ah okay. Yes, the e6501.
The takeover from NXP was in early 2015, AFAIK.

All other product or service names are the property of their respective owners. © 2013 Freescale Semiconductor, Inc.

Anyway. We will observe it