High-Level Overview - Intel PXA270 Optimization Manual

Introduction
•
Chapter 6, "Power Optimization"
using the PXA27x processor.
•
Appendix A, "Performance Checklist"
which allow for obtain greater performance when using the Intel XScale® Microarchitecture
and the PXA27x processor.
1.2

High-Level Overview

Mobile and wireless devices simplify our lives, keep us entertained, increase productivity and
maximize our responsiveness. Enterprise and individual consumers alike realize the potential and
are integrating these products at a rapid rate into their everyday life. Customer expectations exceed
what is being delivered today. The desire to communicate and compute wirelessly - to have access
to information anytime, anywhere, is the expectation. Manufacturers require technologies that
deliver high-performance, flexibility and robust functionality-all in the small-size, low-power
framework of mobile handheld, battery-powered devices. The Intel® Personal Internet Client
Architecture (Intel® PCA) processors with Intel XScale® Microarchitecture help drive wireless
handheld device functionality to new heights to meet customer demand. Combining low-power,
high-performance, compelling new features and second generation memory stacking, Intel PCA
processors help to redefine what a mobile device can do to meet many of the performance demands
of Enterprise-class wireless computing and feature-hungry technology consumers.
Targeted at wireless handhelds and handsets such as cell phones and PDAs with full featured
operating systems, the Intel PXA27x processor family is the next generation of ultra-low-power
applications with industry leading multimedia performance for wireless clients. The Intel PXA27x
processor is a highly integrated solution that includes Wireless Intel Speedstep® technology for
ultra-low-power, Intel® Wireless MMX™ technology and up to 624 MHz for advanced
multimedia capabilites, and Intel® Quick Capture Interface to give customers the ability to capture
high quality images and video.
The PXA27x processor incorporates a comprehensive set of system and peripheral functions that
make it useful in a variety of low-power applications. The block diagram in
the PXA27x processor system-on-a-chip, and shows a primary system bus with the Intel XScale®
Microarchitecture core (Intel XScale® core) attached along with an LCD controller, USB Host
controller and 256 KBytes of internal memory. The system bus is connected to a memory
controller to allow communication to a variety of external memory or companion-chip devices, and
it is also connected to a DMA/bridge to allow communication with the on-chip peripherals. The
key features of all the sub-blocks are described in this section, with more detail provided in
subsequent sections.
1-2
discusses the trade-offs between performance and power
is a set of guidelines for system level optimizations
Intel® PXA27x Processor Family Optimization Guide
Figure 1-1 illustrates