Motorola 32-Bit Microcontrollers Chosen by GM for Electronic Powertrain Systems

AUSTIN, Texas, Oct. 28, 2002; In a significant move within the automotive industry, Motorola, Inc. announced that General Motors , the largest vehicle manufacturer in the world, has specified the processors to be used in electronic powertrain systems supplied by its vendors. GM has now standardized on Motorola's 32-bit MPC500 microcontroller (MCU) line to help enable increased fuel efficiency and reduced emissions.

The use of a common MCU for the primary microprocessor as a single hardware solution to address engine control across a huge range of vehicles benefits GM significantly. Previously GM may have had to use 10 different modules across 10 different vehicles as an example. Now with this highly integrated system-on-chip, GM can standardize and ultimately save costs, simplify design, and even add new features to the vehicle that may not have been possible with a less integrated or lower performing MCUs.

"The GM Powertrain System 3 eMotion controller began a new direction for us. We wanted to attack the proliferation of microcontrollers that GM Powertrain has had to deal with. One tool we felt we had was to specify the microprocessor that our electronic control unit (ECU) suppliers had to use to bid on our business," said Dennis Bogden, director of powertrain electronics engineering, General Motors. "We set up a special team to review all alternatives and after much deliberation, we felt the MPC565 was the best choice."

Why The MPC565? The MPC500 microcontrollers are designed to provide advanced capabilities:

-- This industry-standard architecture is supported by a wide variety of development tools and development systems, for which a great deal of expertise is readily available.

-- The high performance of the chip simplifies the design process by offering performance needed for a model-based development environment, with high-level language support.

-- The chip offers support methodology for a clean, efficient development environment.

-- The MPC565 MCU integrates peripherals such as Timer Processor Units (TPUs), QADCs, 1.0 MB of embedded flash memory and Nexus debug capabilities, among others.

Motorola's MPC500 Microcontrollers

A long-time Motorola customer, GM has used the company's microcontrollers for engine control since 1978. Since the introduction of the award-winning MPC555* in 1998, the MPC500 Family has rapidly gained acceptance throughout North America, Europe and Japan as an industry standard MCU architecture for high-speed automotive applications. Each device in the growing family features a 32-bit RISC core that is compliant with the PowerPC instruction set architecture. Computational abilities may be increased with a floating point unit that is standard on the MPC500 Family of devices, designed to provide the high performance and flexibility that embedded system design engineers need to tackle complex control functions.

With the next-generation MPC5500 Family, Motorola plans to provide a direct migration path, addressing future OEM requirements for automotive and industrial applications and enhancing the long-term sustainability of customers' products that are based on existing MPC500 devices. As with other Motorola microcontroller and microprocessor lines, a comprehensive suite of hardware and software development tools is available for the MPC500 Family to help simplify and shorten customers' development cycles.