ARM is introducing a new processor-specific ELF section attribute flag SHF_ARM_PURECODE. This attribute aims to facilitate the separation of instructions and data in program's memory when targeting micro-controllers.
Micro-controllers are important and ubiquitous in the modern world and are becoming more so via the Internet of Things (IoT). Good support for microcontrollers is an essential part of a modern software development toolkit. For reasons of cost, energy efficiency, robustness, performance, and security, micro-controllers often feature on-chip memory.
For reasons of trade-off between energy efficiency and performance, many low-cost micro-controllers implement low-power on-chip non-volatile memory which has low access speed. There are additional system-level techniques that enable the designs to achieve good performance.
When working with such a component, the developer may need to separate instructions and data in the program's memory to get the best performance. To support this requirement, ARM® is introducing a new processor-specific ELF section attribute SHF_ARM_PURECODE.
Updated the PDF fixing broken figure references.