Greetings,
I have a few questions regarding the Neoverse N1. According to the specifications, it mainly uses the ARMV8.2 ISA. However, there is possible support also for other instructions in other ISAs such as v8.4, v8.5 and cryptographic extensions. I also read in the cryptographic technical manual that those are licensed separately. How does that work? Are these added in by ARM? If so, is it possible to add support for other instructions from v8.3 for example? Specifically, I am interested in hardware support for the pointer authentication (PAC) instructions from v8.3. Thank you for your help and support.
Best regards,
Mohannad Ismail
> I also read in the cryptographic technical manual that those are licensed separately. How does that work?
ARM.ARM says Armv8.2 extensions to the Cryptographic Extension, please refer to Armv8.2-SHA / Armv8.2-SM functionality.
For example, the Cortex-A75 core Cryptographic Extension supports the ARMv8 Cryptographic Extension.
The Cryptographic Extension adds new A64, A32, and T32 instructions to Advanced SIMD that accelerate Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption and decryption. It also adds instructions to implement the Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA) functions SHA-1, SHA-224, and SHA-256.
> If so, is it possible to add support for other instructions from v8.3 for example? Specifically, I am interested in hardware support for the pointer authentication (PAC) instructions from v8.3.
Arm architecture allows the partner to implement their own SoC with different Architecture features. So it is possible for a partner to implement an Armv8.2-A SoC with Armv8.3-PAC extension.
Thank you very much for your reply.
That is very interesting! I wish to purchase one with these specifications if that is possible. How can I order one of these SoC and from who? I am currently in the United States. Who are the partners here, or do I contact ARM directly? Can you please provide me with resources and details on how I can purchase this? Thank you for your help and support.
Please send your purchase inquiry to support@arm.com. Someone will handle it accordingly for you. Please elaborate your company name if possible.
For the Arm architecture specification, it is public and free
- https://developer.arm.com/documentation/ddi0487/fb/
For the Arm SoC specifications, please refer to ( Documents are available for the partners purchased the IPs)
- https://developer.arm.com/documentation/search/5eec6e37e24a5e02d07b2559