Freescale CEO Reaffirms PowerPC Commitment After Apple's Intel Move

ORLANDO, Fla. — Freescale Semiconductor Chairman and CEO Michel Mayer used the keynote of the first Freescale Technology Forum here Tuesday (June 21) to reassure developers of the chip maker's commitment to the PowerPC — and drive home his belief in the power of standards, the consumer, horizontal innovation and ubiquitous embedded connectivity.

"We are committed to our PowerPC roadmap and are going to continue our investment in the architecture," said Mayer, assuaging fears that Freescale would re-evaluate its strategy in the wake of Apple's recently announced plan to move from the PowerPC to Intel's x86 architecture.

Speaking before an audience of up to 1,500 developers, partners, analysts and media, Mayers also conducted demonstrations of an ultrawideband-enabled TV from Haier based on Freescale's XS110 chip, as well as a tri-axis low-g accelerometer for portable devices.

Mayer also outlined key industry trends, especially the growing power of consumers who have outstripped spending by corporations. While the U.S. has historically been the dominant consumer in world, that is definitely no longer the case, he said.

The growth of the consumer has pulled innovation away from the PC, which has become a commodity item, he said, and instead has pushed it in the direction of cellphones, cars and home gateways with convergence. "This will allow tremendous growth in connectivity," he said, envisioning cars "talking" to gas pumps and intelligent vending machines streamlining the supply chain.

Combined with the impact of globalization, with capital and ideas flowing freely across borders, the pace of innovation has accelerated to the point where it is "now less an individual pursuit but more a team effort . . . no one company can do it all. We have to build an ecosystem," he said, "innovation must take place horizontally."

The enabling factor for such ecosystems is convergence around standards. "Standards drive innovation by letting more participate [in development] . . . you can mix and match," he said. "We need more and more common platforms."

After stressing how Freescale would help transportation, wireless and networking developers meet the technology and time-to-market demands, Mayer demonstrated several key enabling technologies.

The first was of a tri-axis low-g accelerometer, the MMA7260Q, for portable consumer devices. The sensor responded to freefall situations and continuous g changes. The former could be used to alert a falling laptop to "park" its hard drive to avoid data loss. The latter application demonstrated cursor movement by simply moving the mobile device in a given direction.

Meanwhile, Chinese TV maker Haier demonstrated streaming video from a CD player to a plasma TV over a UWB connection using Freescale's XS110 chip set. While current versions of the chip max out with payloads of up to 70 Mbits/s, the company promised a 660-Mbit/s version by year's end. This would allow 500 Mbits/s at the media access control layer, sufficient for transmitting USB 2.0 signals over UWB.