> we both might be right in that yes, there is an MV78200 at 1.2Ghz,
> but it might not be available in any significant volume at this
> time, nor even shipping yet.

Yes, that sounds like a probable explanation.
May I ask, where and when did you see the MV78200 at 1.2 GHz in person?


Another thing that puzzles me regarding Marvell and ARM:

According to Marvell, their Sheeva core was developed from both the Intel XScale and their own Feroceon CPU, both being ARMv5 ISA implementations. So one would assume the Sheeva to be ARMv5 ISA compliant as well. But then there is this:

"Compliant with the Cortex A8, Sheeva also supports both the ARMv6 and ARMv7 instruction sets, making it the world's first dual ARM ISA compatible CPU."
http://www.marvell.com/technologies/cpu_history/cpu_history.jsp

What's Sheeva then? ARMv5 (like XScale and Feroceon), ARMv6 or ARMv7 (like Cortex-A8)? Or a combination of these? Very confusing. Can anyone shed some light, please?


Edit:

http://www.marvell.com/files/technologies/SheevaUntoldStory.pdf from August 2008 provides some further clues:

"2009 - A new flagship CPU: Newest CPU core features multi-Ghz performance, [...] out-of-order execution, and full ARMv6 and ARMv7 compatibility"
(page 2, "Figure 1. Timeline of Marvell CPU development")

"Marvell has extended its license to cover ARM v6 and v7, the most recent version of the architecture. The company expects to sample its first ARM v7 CPU in late 2008."
(page 3)

So it seems that contrary to the statement on the Marvell "History of CPU" webpage current Sheeva core(s) are ARMv5 ISA compliant and *not* ARMv6 or ARMv7 ISA compliant but *future* Sheeva cores are supposed to be.

On a sidenote, pages 5/6 are good for some great laughter:

"Marvell's recent 88F6000 processors achieve CPU speeds of up to 2.0GHz. This clock speed [...] is faster than any [...] PowerPC processor [...] To minimize cost and power, the 88F6000 processors use a simpler CPU design than other Marvell products. This CPU is a scalar design, executing only one instruction per cycle, and it has no reordering capability."

A fabled 2.0 GHz in-order non-superscalar ARMv5 faster than for instance an existing 2.0 GHz out-of-order superscalar PPC970FX? Good one ;-)

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf on 2009/3/23 17:28 ]