The MPC860 PowerQUICC is a versatile one-chip integrated microprocessor and peripheral combination that can be used in a variety of controller applications, excelling particularly in communications and networking products.

The PowerQUICC can be described as a next-generation MC68360 QUICC for network and data communication applications, providing higher performance in all areas of device operation including flexibility, extensions in capability, and integration.

The MPC860 PowerQUICC, like the MC68360 QUICC, integrates two processing blocks. One block is the embedded MPC8xx core and the second block is a Communication Processor Module (CPM) that closely resembles the MC68360 CPM. The CPM supports four serial communications controllers (SCCs) on the device; however, there are actually eight serial channels—four SCCs, two serial management controllers (SMCs), one serial peripheral interface (SPI) and one I²C interface. This dual-processor architecture provides lower power consumption than traditional architectures because the CPM off-loads peripheral tasks from the embedded MPC8xx core.