ARM CORTEX-A SERIES FAMILY Genevieve Senecal and Sara Tibbetts Agenda ■ ARM Holdings ■ What is a microprocessor? ■ ARM Cortex Cores ■ ARM Cortex-A Series ■ Architectures ■ Characteristics ■ Processors ■ Future What is ARM? ■ ARM is a leading microprocessor manufacturer, providing a large range of cores to support performance, power and cost requirements in the digital market – The Architecture for the Digital World ARM Holdings History ■ ARM Holdings was founded on 27 November, 1990 ■ ARM originally stood for “Acorn RISC Machine” ■ Owned by SoftBank Group Tokyo, Japan Barn where ARM Holdings Started http://www.thememo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/1991-ARM_Brochure_Barn-750x506.jpg Leader in the Industry ■ ARM’s chip caught the attention of Nokia in 1993 for the first cell phone with a menu and basic games ■ ARM’s chips are cheap to produce ■ Attractive to companies such as NXP, NVIDIA, Texas Instruments, and Samsung ■ Companies extend ARM cores in their products ■ ARM chips are extremely power efficient Nokia 6110 ■ Prevents battery drain in the http://mobile.cdn.softpedia.com/phone-pics/Nokia-6110-3.jpg smartphone industry Competitors ■ ARM’s largest competitor is Intel ■ ARM does not manufacture their chips, while Intel does ■ ARM is able to sell licenses to their designs for between $500,000 and $10 million ■ Significantly cheaper for a company than developing a chip ■ ARM earns a royalty for each of their chips ■ ARM’s business model allows for a higher profit than their competitors can achieve What is a Microprocessor? ■ A microprocessor is an integrated circuit that contains all of the functions of a CPU ■ Low cost processing power ■ Used on devices from small embedded systems to large super computers ARM Cortex Cores ■ Cortex-A ■ High performance ■ Cortex-R ■ Fast response ■ Cortex-M ■ Low power ■ SecurCore ■ Tamper resistant One of the reasons that the term Cortex® was chosen is because it refers to the outer layer of the cerebrum (the cerebral cortex) which plays an important role in consciousness and intelligence. ARM Cortex-A Overview ■ ARM Cortex-A is the highest performance series ■ Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) • Supports 32 and 64-bit instruction sets ■ ARMv7-A and ARMv8-A architectures Cortex-A Characteristics • Architecture and feature sets • ARMv7-A and ARMv8-A • 32-bit, 64-bit and 16/32-bit instruction sets • Backwards compatible • Supports previous ARM systems • Supports a range of full Operating Systems • Linux, Android, Chrome and MontaVista • Architecture extensions • Security, Floating Point, Addressing to physical memory ARMv7-A vs ARMv8-A ■ ARMv7-A ■ 32-bit instruction set ■ Most widely used in mobile devices ■ ARMv8-A ■ 64-bit support, compatible with 32-bit software ■ Focus on power efficiency Cortex-A Processors ■ Cortex-A8 ■ First processor to support ARMv7-A architecture ■ Mobile and embedded designs ■ Only supports 32-bit architecture ■ Cortex-A32 ■ Smallest and lowest power ARMv8-A processor ■ 25% more efficient than predecessors ■ Highly scalable 32-bit processor ■ Supports ARMv8 and ARMv7 architectures ■ Idle power management https://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a8.php https://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a32.php Multicore Technology ■ Single to quad-core configurations with full hardware coherence ■ Supports symmetric and asymmetric OS implementations ■ Coherence with external non-cached bus masters ■ Coherence with other CPU clusters Cortex-A15 ■ High Performance Line ■ Tegra 4 NVIDIA Mobile Processor ■ ARMv7-A architecture ■ 32-bit infrastructure with 1TB addressing Cortex-A8 ■ High Efficiency Line ■ Armv7-A ■ Designed to meet the needs of the smartphone market ■ iPhone 4 ■ Apple TV (2nd Gen) Cortex-A7 ■ Ultra-High Efficiency Line ■ ARMv7-A ■ Raspberry Pi 2 Applications Future Endeavors • Mentor Graphics license agreement • ARM Fast Models • Access all ARM , including Cortex-A • UMi Z Smartphone • ARM Cortex A-72 • Xiaomi Mi Box • ARM Cortex A-53 Sources ■ http://www.nvidia.com/content/tegra/images/tegra4-processor.png ■ https://www.google.com/search?q=microprocessor&espv=2&biw=1745&bih=885&so urce=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiTzs34qt3QAhVHh1QKHf4qCqkQ_AUIBigB #imgrc=FYvpfTb_HErXQM%3A ■ https://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a • http://leverhawk.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/ARM-chip-image.jpg • https://community.arm.com/groups/soc-implementation/blog/2013/06/13/big- things-were-a-kickin-at-dac-in-austin-with-arm-amp-arm-partners • https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-24/how-arm-holdings- dominates-the-chip-world.