In a press release from Freescale, details have been given regarding variants on the 600e PowerPC core. Utilizing a 90nm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) copper interconnect technology, three new chips will find their way to market. Variants include a single core MPC8641, a dual core MPC8641D, and the MPC7448 discreet processor, which gives higher performance at a lower power level, able to consume less than 10 Watts running at 1.4 GHz.
The new chips offer pin-to-pin compatibility with the MPC7447A, and offer 1MB of L2 cache, and are expected to surpass 1.5GHz. As is typical, Apple has made no comment on whether they will include this chip in future models, but with the eMac, the iBook and the PowerBook still running on G4 architecture, there are plenty of willing candidates for the upgrade. The dual core G4 chip has been previously rumored to be the next step for the PowerBook line.
