All:
The MCF54455 is very forgiving in its power supply needs. The quote at the beginning of this post sounds correct. If the EVDD/SVDD supplies come up first, the pads protect themselves by tristating (high impedance). The ideal scenario is to bring the "I/O" power supplies up first and follow that with the core power supply. The pads have logic in them that waits for the "core logic" IVDD supply in this case to power up before making the pads active. The only really bad thing you can do is find a supply with some very aggressive ramp rate as pointed out in the post. An aggressive ramp rate provides little or no value for you, and instead generates an edge that could falsely trigger the ESD protection circuits and you'd see a very interesting pattern on your oscope where your supply trys to ramp and gets clamped to ground, and then it releases and you'll see your supply try to ramp again...depending on the supply...that is... If you have one of those fancy ones that detects overcurrent, it may just shutdown.
The supplies that we used on the reference board, are just that. ColdFire MPUs do NOT require you to use our supplies and more specifically they are NOT matched. So the supplies are the EVB are just good old fashion switching supplies and provide a good example, but many old fashion LDOs or switchers will work just fine.
Key points to watch out if you choose to not follow the reference design...
Make sure to have a DDR supply that can sink and source current if you use termination resistors. Lots of good cheap regulators for this on the market today.
Make sure you DO NOT tie the VREF and VTT supplies together.
And last...
Try to ramp the "higher voltage" supplies first and have the IVDD supply follow behind. Lots of tricks to doing this. Cascaded linear regulators can do the trick if you are not too concerned about power consumption.
Cheers
JWW