Freescale Semiconductor's MPC8555E PowerQUICC™ III host processor integrates a wide range of advanced Freescale technologies, modular cores and peripherals. Leveraging Freescale's system-on-chip (SoC) PowerQUICC III platform architecture, the MPC8555E combines the powerful Book E e500 core and communications peripheral technology to balance processor performance with I/O system throughput. The processor is designed to offer clock speeds scaling from 533 MHz to 1 GHz.

Freescale's MPC8555E device integrates two processing blocks: a high-performance e500 core that implements the enhanced Book E instruction-set architecture and a RISC-based Communications Processor Module (CPM) that supports a wide range of communications peripherals. This innovative architecture is designed to reduce power consumption and offer a more balanced approach to processing than traditional processor architectures. The CPM offloads low-level peripheral communications tasks, enabling the embedded e500 core to manage high-level processing tasks. The MPC8555E device's high level of integration helps simplify board design and enhances system-level bandwidth and performance. In addition to the e500 core and CPM, the MPC8555E features an integrated security engine, a double data rate SDRAM (DDR SDRAM) memory controller, dual Gigabit Ethernet controllers, a four-channel DMA controller, dual asynchronous receiver/transmitters (DUART) and a 64-bit PCI controller that can also serve as two 32-bit PCI ports. Dual on-chip PCI support provides a cost-effective alternative to separate, discrete PCI bridges and chipsets for I/O-intensive applications that require multiple PCI interfaces. In addition to these features, the MPC8555E provides a local bus controller and I2C support.

The MPC8555E processor features a security engine that supports DES, 3DES, MD-5, SHA-1, AES and ARC-4 encryption algorithms, as well as offering a public key accelerator and on-chip random number generator. This embedded security core is derived from Freescale's security coprocessor product line and offers the same direct-memory access (DMA) and parallel processing capabilities, as well as the ability to perform single-pass encryption and authentication as required by widely used security protocols, such as IPsec and 802.11i. Integrated security makes the MPC8555E an optimal communications processor solution for applications that require security features in concert with high performance and low system-level cost.