After introducing its first Layerscape (LS) processors, Freescale appeared to be targeting ARM-based products for low-performance markets. Its introduction of the new LS2 family blasted those impressions out of the water. The two LS2 processors extend the capabilities of the earlier LS1 in every metric. Even compared with the high-performance versions of the Power-based QorIQ, the LS2 devices offer more CPU performance than the P series and greater packet-processing capability than the T series. The LS2 family uses the Cortex-A57 CPU and thus moves from the LS1's 32-bit ARM architecture to 64 bits. The new family includes the octa-core LS2085A and the quad-core LS2045A. Both processors operate the CPU at 2.0GHz and can process up to 20 million packets per second (Mpps). Freescale plans to sample these devices in 2H14, and we expect production shipments to start in 3Q15. The company's Layerscape platform supports cores based on the Power or ARM instruction-set architecture (ISA); as such, it allows Freescale to develop processors using either technology.
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