Joint blog byPhil Morris and Christopher Seidl
With digital transformation well underway across global industries, the need for more energy-efficient, secure, and scalable IoT connected world is essential. The adoption of embedded magnetoresistive random access memory (eMRAM) non-volatile memory (NVM) on FD-SOI process nodes is a major step forward. In place of eFlash NVM planer process nodes, eMRAM offers a new alternative in supporting the IoT endpoint device designs for this connected world. eMRAM offers the combination of SRAM read/write flexibility and eFlash ;data retention capability in a single memory array; compared with eFlash, it is more efficient in power and area.
Building on Arm's proven leadership as the trusted silicon architect, we have developed the Musca-S1 MRAM-enabled IoT demonstrator. Musca-S1is a dual Arm Cortex-M33 test-chip board architecture that integrates the Platform Security Architecture (PSA) recommendations and achieved PSA Certified level 1 and functional API certification. The Musca-S1 MRAM-enabled 28nm FD-SOI IoT demonstrator is now ready for partners to evaluate and our Musca-S1 on-demand training can help jump-start ;the users' IoT projects. A series of IoT examples based on CMSIS explaining how IoT developers use eMRAM NVM to connect securely to IoT cloud services are also available.
The Musca-S1 MRAM-enabled IoT demonstrator is based on the Arm Corstone SSE-200 pre-verified subsystem with dual Cortex-M33 processor cores. It includes
According to the industry prediction, one trillion connected IoT devices will be deployed worldwide by 2035. IoT applications span across most markets, for example, consumer electronics, industrial manufacturing, metering, medical, agriculture. A trillion is a massive number one way to think of it is 10,000 different designs deployed in 10 million units over a period of 10 years. Products that are shipped in very high volume are all cost-sensitive.Therefore many IoT endpoint devices must be based on custom hardware carrying true cost-effective microcontrollers that are available in multiple variants, including eMRAM.
An effective, flexible, and easy-to-use software development process is paramount, as embedded engineers must optimize, extend, and validate complex software stacks that implement the overall device functionality. To simplify this development process and increase the reuse of standardized software, Arm has developed the Cortex Microcontroller Software Interface Standard (CMSIS)
One component of the CMSIS is the CMSIS-Pack system, which provides a delivery mechanism for device support and software components. Today, the CMSIS-Pack system supports more than 7,500 different microcontrollers and provides important ways to manage software components from different sources. One of these software components is Trusted Firmware-M (TF-M), which provides a high-quality, open-source reference implementation of secure software mandated by the PSA. TF-M forms the foundation of the microcontroller Secure Processing Environment (SPE). SPE provides secure boot, isolation from untrusted software and a set of secure services that can be used by the applications. The latest version of TF-M brings crypto, storage, attestation, and secure boot IoT boot services to eMRAM, and the Musca-S1 MRAM-enabled IoT demonstrator (see Figure 1).
Another software component based on CMSIS is a cloud connector (often referred to as IoT client) which runs in the IoT endpoint device. The cloud connector establishes the connection to a selected cloud service. It connects to a simple socket interface abstracts away the networking layers below. Many cloud service providers offer open source software that implements an IoT client for an embedded system. Arm delivers these IoT clients as a software pack for use in Cortex-M based IoT endpoint devices, including the Musca-S1. A secure network interface based on Mbed TLS, another open-source software component, takes care of connecting to the cloud using off-the-shelf security. Running on any RTOS that provides a CMSIS-RTOS v2 API interface, developers can concentrate on creating their user application, without having to worry about the underlying software building blocks (MRAM-enabled IoT Demonstrator (see Figure 1)).
Figure 1 Open IoT Platform - An open SW approach for secure IoT SoCs
Arm takes a holistic view of the IoT endpoint device development cycle using Cortex-M microcontrollers. CMSIS helps ensure software development teams can focus on creating robust, cost-effective applications and many ready-to-use software building blocks are provided to help support the CMSIS-Pack concept.
The Musca loaner program now has a new family member, offering the Musca-S1 MRAM-enabled IoT demonstrator. Musca-S1 boards are available on request from Arm Developer to Arm and Samsung Foundry ecosystem partners interested in experiencing the IoT connected world through eMRAM>
By combining the CMSIS based open software approach and downloading project examples, IoT designers can quickly test and evaluate Arm's end-to-end secure IoT solutions. With Musca-S1, now extends to using next-generation NVM memory technology for energy efficiency and security at scale.
For more details, please read our Open IoT Platform white paper. We welcome you to watch the Arm and Samsung Foundry on-demand: Musca-S1 Jumpstart training webinar.
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