Motorola’s MPC850 broadens the PowerPC? family portfolio by offering similar integration of the MPC860 in a smaller package and at a lower cost. The MPC850 is a versatile, one-chip integrated microprocessor and peripheral combination that can be used in a variety of controller applications. In addition, its lower cost implementation of the MPC860 provides an effective price/performance solution for networking and communications applications. The MPC850 is powered by a high-performance embedded PowerPC core and includes extensive communications and system integration support, simplifying the development effort and decreasing time-to-market. An example of the integration that the MPC850 provides begins with the communications processor module (CPM) which offloads tasks from the embedded PowerPC core providing increased performance
and efficiency over more traditional CPU architectures. Furthermore, the CPM of the MPC850 supports up to seven serial channels, two serial communications controllers (SCC’s), one I2C port, one universal serial bus channel (USB), including two serial management controllers (SMC’s), and one serial peripheral interface (SPI).