ARM unveils Cortex-M4

LONDON, UK: ARM Holdings, headquartered in Cambridge, England, has announced the launch of the Cortex-M4 microcontroller core for use in digital signal control. The Cortex-M4 has been licensed by 5 companies, including STMicroelectronics, and NXP.

The Cortex-M4 processor, ARM Holdings explained in a press release, extends the use of Cortex-M cores to applications that require intensive mathematical computation. 

The company said the Cortex-M4 processor has been designed for use in power management, automotive, industrial automation markets, motor control, and embedded audio. 

The Cortex-M4 processor has a single-cycle multiply-accumulate (MAC) unit, optimised single instruction multiple data (SIMD) instructions, an optional single precision Floating-Point Unit (FPU), as well as saturating arithmetic instructions.

The 32-bit processor core, according to ARM Holdings, is capable of 1.25-DMIPS/MHz for Thumb-2 instructions. 

The Cortex-M4 processor is supported by the ARM physical IP portfolio that includes the Cortex-M low-power optimisation package for the TSMC CE018FG process – otherwise called 180-nm ULL (ultra-low leakage). 

For a target clock frequency of 150-MHz, the ARM physical IP for the 65LPe 65-nm process of GlobalFoundries enables a standard implementation of the Cortex-M4 processor within 65,000 gates as well as a dynamic power consumption of less than 40-microwatts/MHz. The FPU, if included, will add only 25,000 gates, ARM Holdings said.