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

■ Prevents battery drain in the smartphone industry

Nokia 6110http://mobile.cdn.softpedia.com/phone-pics/Nokia-6110-3.jpg

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