Trying to learn about the ARM Cortex M3
solution for low cost embedded market.

Their web site isn't much more than a shallow advertisement.
http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/ARM_Cortex-M3.html

The "datasheet" is a two sheet sales flyer.
No mention of who is licensing and selling this core in chip form.

I need some help.

Anybody know who has implemented the ARM Cortex M3 core
in a chip available to the masses?

diggerdo wrote:
And exactly WHY do you want to use a chip which is hardly or not sold by
anyone?


--
Best Regards,
Ulf Samuelsson
ulf@a-t-m-e-l.com
This message is intended to be my own personal view and it
may or may not be shared by my employer Atmel Nordic AB

Ulf Samuelsson wrote:
Not YET sold by anyone. It's the next generation ARM wave, and it will
take a little while to see devices built around it. Same thing for the
other variants (the A8 and future R derivatives).

Ulf, we're waiting for the ARM Cortex vs AVR32 battle.

"diggerdo" <gotoit@dig.biz> wrote in message
news:InpJf.57610$PL5.50520@newssvr11.news.prodigy. com...
Cortex-M3 isn't yet produced in volume, this will happen later this year.
Test sillicon is available, and if you understand some Russian, you can
become an alpha tester (http://supplier.ru/rus/news/?action=show&id=7).

The first M3 development tools will be available in a few weeks. More
Thumb-2 and v7-M architecture info should become public soon.

Wilco

D. wrote:
Assuming it becomes an industry standard...
Anyone remembering the Itanium?

While the Cortex is probably an improvement over ARM,
it may not be improvement enough
to motivate people to pay millions of dollars.
Think most semiconductor companies will adopt a wait and see.
If needed, it can be licensed and introduced quickly.
If not needed, noone will bother...

One of the arguments for an ARM, is the second source.
The first company to release a Cortex will not have a second source...
It will compete with the coldfires, SH series etc.

Doesn't look like there are Semiconductor companies in the official Cortex
M3 list of licensees...
T.I has licensed the Cortex-A8, but I think this is for Nokia and alike...
The AVR32 seems to run at higher frequency and has an MMU
so they may be focusing on different markets.

--
Best Regards,
Ulf Samuelsson
ulf@a-t-m-e-l.com
This message is intended to be my own personal view and it
may or may not be shared by my employer Atmel Nordic AB

"Ulf Samuelsson" <ulf@a-t-m-e-l.com> wrote in message
news:dt5c39$8g1$2@nntp.aioe.org...
If you have nothing to add, why bother to respond?

"D." <user@servet.net> wrote in message
news:43f6614c$0$1596$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com...
So Ulf comment was literally true. Seemed almost sarcastic.

The M3 was announced two years ago in 2004.
Why isn't it in production yet? Curious.

Wilco Dijkstra wrote:
Interesting - often useful info comes via .ru websites...
I did wonder if Luminary Micro was going to use the Cortex Core.

Since they are a brand new startup, it would seem most of the
established ARM microcontroller vendors did NOT rush to embrace the
Cortex M3. Hmmmm.

According to the press, they will start the hoopla on March 6th.
http://www.eet.com/news/semi/showArt...leID=180203864
[Just remember, hoopla can preceed full commercial release by 12+ months]


Still, a green core, plus a green startup, combined has more risks than
many will tolerate.
Be worth watching... 8-64KF, and 2-6KRam is now crowded space, they will
need something in the peripherals to get attention.

-jg

Ulf Samuelsson wrote:

plus the XC164,

Yes, See also my other post, after Wilco's link.
Looks like the only visible starter for M3, is a very green, startup
company. - This is their first product...

I'd agree - if you look at the little that is mentioned on the upcomming
devices, they mention 8-64K Flash, and 2-6K Ram - which is crowded space
right now, and even somewhat outside the 32 bit sweetspot.

ie : You don't really want to pitch where users are now, but where they
WILL be on their next design.

So the key to how well this goes, will NOT be the core, but the SW
tools, the periherals, and if they have managed to run faster than most
FLASH...

-jg

"Ulf Samuelsson" <ulf@a-t-m-e-l.com> wrote in message
news:dt5q6v$g3$1@nntp.aioe.org...
ARM already is the industry standard.

But if you wait too long, the market may be saturated...

Any of the existing ARMs are of course second sources for any new
ARMs (including Cortex) - that's the advantage of binary compatibility.

Don't forget V850. The M3 outperformance those on all counts.

A new proprietary architecture... Anyone remembering the Itanium? :-)

Does STMicroelectronics qualify as a semiconductor?

Yes, the AVR32 is definitely not in the same market as the M3. It is an
ARM11 + Jazelle + Thumb-2 clone, but because it is late (MIPS did it
a few years ago), it now will have to compete with Cortex-A8. Ouch...

Wilco

"diggerdo" <gotoit@dig.biz> wrote in message
news:IhuJf.33863$H71.18390@newssvr13.news.prodigy. com...
He was sarcastic too.

It was October 2004 so only 15 months ago. There was working silicon late
2005,
it will be in production by the end of 2006, with first consumer products
appearing
in 2007. It normally takes much longer. ARM11 was announced 4 years ago
(april 2002), and the first ARM11 based phone was only recently released.

If you add design & implementation, the total lag from conception of a new
architecture, a new CPU based on that, turning it into a MCU or ASIC, use it
in a
consumer product, to being available in the stores is around 5-8 years.

Add another 2-5 years before a CPU/architecture becomes mainstream. ARM9
still hasn't overtaken the 10 year old ARM7 in terms of volume for example.

Wilco

Wilco Dijkstra wrote:
FYI, their PDF press release contains the link to the news page in English: <http://www.embedded-developer.com/cm3>

Scroll down for the application form (the same as its Russian variant in .doc file).

Vadim

Wilco Dijkstra wrote:
We have had this discussion before.
It reveals there is more than one 'Binary Compatible' yardstick:

Marketing: Will this thing understand some opcodes ?
Great, we'll call it "binary compatible", (we'll point out
later that's not actually 100.0% binary compatible with their
old software)

Software Quality Manager:
Will this thing need new tool chains, and new libraries, and
new qualification flows, and will it crash if it encounters
_any_ ARM opcodes. We may not know they are there - after all,
our existing ARM7's will not tell us that. They run just fine.

No ? Then that is NOT binary compatible.

A Pentium PC is Binary compatible: It will run a 10 year old EXE,
out of the box. It does not choke on any 8086 opcodes.

We have claims of "revolutionary" and "binary compatible" and
"faster/smaller" and the spin merchants don't seem to realise
these are not mutually compatible.

The info so far, sounds decidely 'middle of the road', barely up
to mature, proven silicon that is already shipping.

-jg

Wilco Dijkstra wrote:
Don't think any one plans to put a Cortex-A8 in a smart card
which is one very obvious application for the AVR32...
Cortex M3 does not have a MMU so that could be problematic
when you want to share the smartcard for different vendors
(Amex/Visa/Mastercard)


--
Best Regards,
Ulf Samuelsson
ulf@a-t-m-e-l.com
This message is intended to be my own personal view and it
may or may not be shared by my employer Atmel Nordic AB

Jim Granville wrote:
The key here is "new" ARMs, it is certainly not compatible with "old"
ARMs...

The Cortex - M3 does not implement the 32 bit ARM mode
which means that most of the real low level stuff needs to change.
If you need the highest performance, with ARM7TDMI
you run in 32 bit ARM mode and you (luckily not I ) rewrite things in 32 bit
assembler.
Anything done this way is hard to port.

The Cortex M3 is according to ARM lower performance than the ARM7TDMI
but has lower power consumption which is probably higher than that of an 8
bit micro
so it is not the fastest and not the lowest power.

It is not unlikely that compiler vendors will add Cortex functionality to
their tools.
If they do this for free, then there is of course easier to bring a new part
into a company
since the decision level goes down if investment in tools are not visible.

--
Best Regards,
Ulf Samuelsson
ulf@a-t-m-e-l.com
This message is intended to be my own personal view and it
may or may not be shared by my employer Atmel Nordic AB

They were not on the list on the ARM website where I checked.

When googling for the ST pressrelease I found the announcement and another
piece of news.
ST and Freescale just announced cooperation in promoting the PowerPC for
Automotive
so I guess they are not betting everything in the automotive market on the
Cortex-M3.

--
Best Regards,
Ulf Samuelsson
ulf@a-t-m-e-l.com
This message is intended to be my own personal view and it
may or may not be shared by my employer Atmel Nordic AB

"Ulf Samuelsson" <ulf@a-t-m-e-l.com> wrote in message
news:dt6s9g$ao4$2@nntp.aioe.org...
Like the startup and exception handling code? Each CPU already
needs a unique startup sequence - you can't run the startup code
for an ARM7 on an ARM9 or ARM11 and visa versa. One of the
benefits of Cortex-M3 is that you need less startup code as the
hardware does more (for example nested interrupts can use C
directly without needing an assembler veneer).

Since Thumb-2 is a reencoding of ARM instructions, any existing ARM
assembler can be assembled to Thumb-2 with minimal effort. You may
have heard about the UAL (unified assembler syntax) which is a new
syntax shared between ARM, Thumb-1 and Thumb-2. Before anyone
mentions it, yes of course it is backwards compatible!

According to the ARM website both the M3 and ARM7tdmi run at
100MHz, and the M3 has the same Dhrystone MIPS as an ARM9E
running ARM code (1.2 DMIPS/Mhz).

A quick scan of the AVR8 CPUs revealed that the ATtiny2313/V
seems to be the lowest power AVR at 0.41 mW/Mhz.
Cortex-M3 uses 3.5 times less power...

Additionally a 32-bit CPU can do a lot more work per cycle, so they
run at a lower frequency or sleep for longer. So a higher performance
CPU that uses more power may actually use less *energy* to do a
specific task.

Keil has announced Cortex-M3 support in their tools, but if you prefer
no-cost over low-cost tools: GCC already supports Thumb-2, so
Cortex-M3 is likely added soon.

Wilco

"Ulf Samuelsson" <ulf@a-t-m-e-l.com> wrote in message
news:dt6s9g$ao4$1@nntp.aioe.org...
I don't think anyone sane is going to put the AVR32 there. As I said,
it is an ARM11 class core, so totally unsuitable for smartcards
(it doesn't even have a rotate instruction which is essential for
cryptography). Maybe there will be a smaller low power version
eventually but that wasn't mentioned.

Interestingly it turns out Atmel's marketing department has been
working overtime - their benchmarking figures are obviously bogus.

They chose to compare against the i.MX21/i.MX31 numbers using
GCC (not the fastest compiler around by a large margin) and present
them as official ARM926 and ARM1136 numbers. For the codesize
results they chose EEMBC figures, however the EEMBC codesize
figures optimized for performance are totally meaningless.

The ARM1026 numbers on eembc.org are 34.8% faster than
the i.MX31 (ARM1136) numbers, which goes to show how much
difference a professional compiler can make... So the 1026 is
actually 5% faster than AVR32. ARM1136 is faster than the 1026, the
latest ARM compiler is 20% faster - where does that leave AVR32?

"AVR32 Constently Outperforms in EEMBC Benchmarks"

There is a spelling mistake. That should be: underperforms.

The M3 has an optional MPU.

Wilco

Wilco Dijkstra wrote:
Are you surprised ?
All marketing departments are desperate to make their offerings
look good, so they choose their leading-edge, against the others
trailing edge, and then are selective as well.

I use a general nudge factor of 2:1 in filtering market droid fluff.

If they cannot claim a difference of more than one generation in
performance, then it is not revolutionary, and probably merely
comparable with the 'other guys' next release anyway...

-jg

Wilco Dijkstra wrote:

I can see a RLC, and ASL, but you are right, apparently no
rotate not-thru-carry ?
-jg