Marvell Tuesday (Oct. 11) introduced what it said was the industry's most powerful system controller for Power Architecture-based microprocessors, the Discovery V.
Marvell (Sunnyvale, Calif.) said Discovery V is optimized for a broad range of applications, including routers, switches, wireless base stations and high-volume storage and laser printer applications. Discovery V has already received support from the industry's leading PowerPC processor vendors, Freescale Semiconductor and IBM, Marvell said.
Marvell said Discovery V sets new benchmarks for performance and integration by incorporating a cross-bar architecture, support for advanced communications peripherals and performance-tuned interfaces. The system controller is the industry's first to integrate a DDR2 interface, PCI-Express, USB 2.0 and multiple Gigabit Ethernet ports on a single chip, according to Marvell.
“With the launch of Discovery V, Marvell sees a huge opportunity for applications such as laser printers in markets like Asia, where our customers are seeing unprecedented growth,” said Paramesh Gopi, general manager of Marvell's Embedded and Emerging Products Business Unit, in a statement. “Discovery V is the perfect product for our customers to capitalize on this market opportunity by addressing a wide range of high performance and cost-sensitive applications.”
Marvell offers complete development platforms for Discovery V, enabling customers to start system development without waiting for their own hardware, the company said. Development platforms, including the Freescale MPC7447A/7448A and IBM750FL/GL, will be available when Discovery V samples during the fist quarter of 2006, the company said.
