At the recent Embedded World show in Nuremberg running from 24th to 26th Feb 2015 we saw the first MCU offerings from ARM’s silicon partners based on the high performance Cortex-M7, which is the latest member of the ARM Cortex-M processor family. The Cortex-M7 delivers impressive performance, > 5 Coremark/MHz and twice the compute power of the Cortex-M4, whilst maintaining the low latency and high energy-efficiency of the Cortex-M family.
It has already won 3 awards: Best Processor IP from Linley, Low Power Design Innovation from the NMI, and the STM32 F7 (based on Cortex-M7) won the Best-in-Show Award – Best Hardware Product at the ARM Tech Con.
There was quite a buzz at the show around this new technology and a wide variety of application areas were being demonstrated including audio processing, IoT gateway functionality and advanced GUI interfaces.
On the ARM booth we demonstrated the DSP capabilities which are built into the instruction set of the Cortex-M7, by running one demo to enhance dialog from a movie soundtrack and another demo to enhance the sound quality of a compressed audio stream. These demos were run on STMicroelectronics’ Discovery Board with STM32 F7, based on the Cortex-M7 core.
I interviewed Paul Beckmann, CTO and Founder of DSP Concepts on the ARM booth, together with Fred Le Cam, Product Line Marketing Manager for STM32 F7, STMicroelectronics.
Atmel showed their recently launched SAM V70/V71, SAM E70 and SAM S70 MCUs based on the Cortex-M7 processor with floating point unit. These exciting and innovative devices are targeted at automotive, IoT, medical and industrial applications. The family is based on a platform with a 300MHz core integrated with 16kB of instruction cache, 16kB of data cache and up to 384kB of multi-port SRAM of which up to 256kB can be flexibly configured as tightly-coupled memory for deterministic, real-time access.
On the Atmel booth we saw demos run by Paul Beckmann from DSP Concepts, showing how the SAM V71 can use the high DSP performance of the Cortex-M7 to provide streaming audio across Ethernet AVB for use in audio systems in cars. This demonstrated how the processing power of the Cortex-M7 can be coupled with an efficient Ethernet MAC to provide full Ethernet-AVB functionality.
The demo was running on a SAM V71 Xplained Ultra Evaluation Kit.
richardyork from ARM interviewed Lionel Perdigon, Product Marketing Manager, Microchip.
At the show, Freescale announced their family of Kinetis KV5x MCUs based on the Cortex-M7 core with single-precision floating point unit. The KV5x provides a combination of robust connectivity, security and safety features, which make it particularly suitable for use in digital motor control and power conversion.
It maximizes high performance and deterministic processing by embedding 128kB of data tightly-coupled memory (DTCM) and 64kB of instruction tightly-coupled memory (ITCM) for real-time response in a typical motor control application, further enhanced by the raw processing performance of the Cortex-M7 core which lies at its heart.
Richard York from ARM interviewed Steve Tateosian who is Freescale's Director of Microcontroller Platforms.
STMicroelectronics showcased their STM32 F7, which is also based on the powerful Cortex-M7 processor. The STM32 F7 harnesses ST’s ART accelerator as well as using instruction and data caches to deliver impressive code performance whether a user’s code executes from Flash or from external memory. The device has excellent power efficiency giving 7 Coremark/mW when running 180MHz and typically consuming 120uA when in Stop mode.
On the ST booth we saw how ST is helping the Internet of Things become a reality with a home gateway demonstration powered by the STM32 F7. The gateway included a graphical user interface from which the user can control and monitor usage of their utilities (water, gas, electricity etc.) with full connectivity throughout the house and to the outside world. The user was also able to download new functionality to the gateway via an online apps store.
The demonstration showed how the power of the Cortex-M7 can be used to provide an easy-to-use graphical interface whilst performing a variety of data aggregation and analysis functions in the background.
Andy Frame from ARM interviewed Johan Pauvert, MCU Technical Marketing Manager, STMicroelectronics.
So we have seen the first exciting MCUs based on Cortex-M7, delivering high levels of performance to the MCU market, whilst still maintaining the power-efficient, low latency characteristics of the Cortex-M processor family. I'm looking forward to seeing the consumer devices which this level of performance will enable, and the future processors coming from our lead partners and further licensees of the Cortex-M7.