Motorola Inc’s first solo contribution to the PowerPC family is the RMCU500 family of microcontrollers, designed for embedded control applications such as automotive engine control, cable television set-top boxes and computer peripherals. IBM Corp has given too few details of its 403GA PowerPC microcontroller (CI No 2,399) for detailed comparisons to be made, but the two parts are aimed at some of the same markets. Motorola’s first product is the RMCU505, a 32-bit microcontroller with a core architecture powered by a single-issue PowerPC CPU. It is rated at 25 MIPS and should go to 40 MIPS by the end of next year. Motorola is working with Kaleida Labs Inc in Mountain View, and Scientific-Atlanta Inc, Norcross, Georgia on development of next-generation digital home communications terminals based on the new line. The RMCU500 line uses a modular design methodology similar to the MC68300 and MC68HC16 families of microcontrollers and the proprietary Inter-Module Bus developed for the 68300 family will be added to the RMCU500 Family so that Motorola can mobilise its extensive libraries of peripheral circuits. The RMCU505 has an on-chip 4Kb instruction cache, which can be used as high- speed storage for program instructions and 4Kb of static RAM for storage of working variables. An on- board System Integration Unit enables integration with external memories, other CPUs and peripheral devices. It includes 12 programmable chip selects to simplify interface to external peripherals, an interrupt controller with 32 interrupt sources, and 16- and 32-bit programmable bus sizing. An on-chip, single- or double-precision floating point unit handles some kinds of graphic-int ensive applications. No word on price or ship date.
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