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Motorola updates PowerPC 7450

Bug fix rather than feature boost

Motorola has quietly extended its PowerPC family with two G4-class CPUs: the MPC7451 and the MPC7441.

Both parts appear to be basic updates to the existing MPC7450 and 7440. The 7450, also known as the G4 Plus, was Motorola's second generation of G4 processor while the 7440 is a low-power version designed for mobile systems. While the 7441 replaces the 7440, Motorola will continue to offer the 7450.

Quite how the 7451 and 7441 improve on the 7450 and 7440, respectively, isn't clear. Certainly the specification sheets for both appear no different from those of the older chips but for the change of name. For that reason, we suspect the two new chips fix long-standing bugs - 'errata', as they're euphemistically called by the semiconductor industry - in the original 7450 and 7440 silicon.

According to Motorola's Web site, the 7451 is clocked at 533, 667, 733 and 867MHz, contains 256KB of on-die L2 cache and supports up to 2MB of external L3 cache. It can support a frontside bus running at up to 133MHz and can address up to 64GB of physical memory.

The 7441 is essentially a 7451 in a smaller, mobile-oriented package. It runs at a low core voltage - 1.5V compared to the 7451's 2.5V - and does not support an external L3 cache. Like the old 7440, it is offered in 600MHz and 700MHz versions. ®

Related Link

Motorola: MPC7451 details

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