Tony Smith of The Register (UK) has published a look at Freescaleis upcoming smaller, faster G4 processor. Freescale is the name of Motorolais spun-off semiconductor division that now makes PowerPC processors.

According to the article, the processor will be the first 90 NN G4 processor, making it smaller and cooler than the current generation G4 processors that power Appleis PowerBooks, iBooks, and eMacs. The processors are also expected to be faster, coming in faster than 1.5 GHz. From the article:

The new chip is Freescaleis first 90nm G4 and is based on the companyis e600 core, the foundation for Freescaleis upcoming line of dual-core chips. The 7448, however, contains just one core, clocked to beyond 1.5GHz. It contains 32KB of L1 cache and 1MB of L2, double the 512KB of L2 found in the MPC7447A currently driving Appleis PowerBook G4 and iBook G4 notebooks.

Indeed, the 7448 is likely to provide Apple with its next notebook speed bump, as the company struggles to fit the hot-running PowerPC 970FX - aka the G5 - into a laptop.

However, it will have to wait: the 7448 is not expected to sample until H1 2005, Freescale said.

Thereis much more detail on the new processor in the full story at The Register.