We won't talk about Coldfire - the science fiction trilogy written by Celia S. Friedman, but about Freescale ColdFire microprocessor manufactured for the embedded systems.

The project described below, includes Cold-Fire combined with a graphics chip. The scheme takes advantage of the well-known Freescale MCF5206 microprocessor, coupled with Fujitsu graphics chip MB86290.
The main features of the processor are:

• 17 MIPS @ 33 MHz
• 512-byte Instruction Cache
• 512-byte On-Chip SRAM
• DRAM Controller
• Two Universal Synchronous/Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitters (UART)
• Dual Multimode Timers
• I2C-Compatible Bus
• Debug Module
• Low-Cost 160-Pin QFP Package
• Fully Static 5V Operation
• 8-bit general-purpose parallel I/O port

The main features of the graphic controller are:

• Operating frequency: 100 MHz (External clock of 14.32 MHz Max)
• Host interface: Enables direct connection to a CPU (Hitachi SH3/4 or NEC V832).
• Drawing features:
• Drawing at a peak rate of 800 Mpixels per second (at an internal operating frequency of 100 MHz)
• 2D drawing functions: Point, line, triangle, polygon, BLT, and pattern drawing
• 3D drawing functions: Point, line, and triangle drawing, and hidden surface removal by Z-buffering
• Special effects: Anti-aliasing, bold/dashed-line processing, alpha blending, Gouraud shading, texture mapping (bilinear filtering, perspective correct), and tiling
• Display features:
• Maximum display resolution supported: 1024 x 768 pixels
• Color display either with a color palette of 8 bits per pixel or directly using 5-bit RGB colors of 16 bits per pixel
• Overlaying four layers of screen, of which two lower layers can be divided into the left and right parts
• Supporting two 64x64-pixel hardware cursors
• Three-channel D/A converter integrated to output analog RGB signals
• Capable of superimposing using an external synchronization mode
• Memory interface:
• Using SDRAM as graphics memory at an operating clock speed of 100 MHz and data bus width of 64 bits.
• Capable of connecting up to 32 Mbytes (offering a throughput of 800 Mbps).

The project is a medium performances graphic module adapted for the applications where a PC is not suitable for spaces, dissipations or cost but at the same time are required both processing performances (interface management) and rather challenging graphics (2D).

In Download section you'll find the high resolution schematic of the module that was used as a baseline for the development of the graphics machines for the games.

Read the Italian version: ColdFire - il microprocessore della Freescale

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