AppliedMicro Offers Energy-Efficient Processors

AppliedMicro, a provider of energy conscious computing and communications solutions, announced the APM801xx, a family of energy-efficient embedded processors with a small form factor for Power Architecture-based products. The company said the APM801xx product family could support a broad selection of peripherals for a range of consumer devices, from gateways, control panels and energy meters to network attached storage systems, consumer WiFi access points, residential gateways and connected displays.

AppliedMicro said each of the System-on-a-Chip (SoC) devices in the APM801xx family is designed to deliver processing performance for consumer embedded systems that require less than 1W of operating power and low bill-of-material cost. The AppliedMicro APM801xx family will come in three variants: 801xx-400, the 801xx-600, and 801xx-800 and will be available in two different packages in 10x10-mm BGA and 14x14-mm BGA. Samples of the processor are expected in June 2010 and full production quantities are scheduled for the third quarter. Pricing is under $10 for 10,000-unit quantities.

"We're starting to see the drive toward energy-efficient electronic systems come in the form of government mandates and corporate initiatives but the need for high-performance in a range of consumer applications continues to increase as volumes of digital content being created and accessed by a growing array of convergence devices continues to rise," said Gopi Sirineni, vice president of AppliedMicro's consumer and SMB business unit. "TheAPM801xx processor family provides best-in-class energy consumption without sacrificing performance for these applications. The power envelope of the APM801xx processor is second-to-none in its class and it allows embedded developers to start their migration toward full-featured, low-cost systems."

The APM801xx family supports CPU frequencies up to 800 Mhz, with interchip and networking connectivity key to the delivery of high performance at low power dissipation. Each family member is enabled with a number of high-speed interfaces such as PCIe, SATA, GigE, SDIO, TDM and USB 2.0. The company claimed the high integration and small footprint of the device helps drives minimal bill-of-material costs for embedded platforms. Estimated performance is 1,216 Dhrystone MIPS and typical power consumption is ~1W in active mode and 0.3W in standby mode.

"AppliedMicro is answering the call for greater energy efficiency with its APM801xx processor family," said Christos Georgopoulos, CEO of home gateway provider InAccess Networks. "The consumer market demands high performance systems at low cost but many of the embedded processors on the market today can deliver one of the two benchmarks but usually not both. The APM801xx family exceeds target market feature needs at the right BOM to provide a nice balance to our design goals as we look to build systems that don't require heat sinks, cooling fans or extra system costs and allows us to meet 1W system consortium standards."