Migrating a software application from ARMv5 to ARMv7-A/R

This application note is intended to help you migrate software applications from ARMv5 to ARMv7-A/R. It describes the differences between ARMv5 and ARMv7, and explains the issues involved in migrating an existing software application from ARMv5 to ARMv7. Familiarity with ARMv5 is assumed. This application note also assumes that you have software development experience with ARMv5.

Compared with ARMv5, the ARMv7 architecture provides a number of new features and benefits:

• NEON™ technology provides flexible and powerful acceleration for consumer multimedia applications, and delivers a significantly enhanced user experience.
• TrustZone® technology provides security for a wide array of client and server computing platforms, including handsets, tablets, wearable devices, and enterprise systems.
• Thumb®-2 technology provides increased performance while maintaining the high code density of the original Thumb instruction set.
• A new set of features enhances multiprocessing functionality.
• Strongly-ordered, Normal, and Device memory types provide fine-grained control over memory accessing order.
• Exclusive access instructions replace the legacy SWP instruction to support nonblocking shared memory synchronization primitives.

If you have any feedback about this document, please feel free to contact me. My email address is Roy.Hu@arm.com.

Thanks.