Hello everyone,
I would like to know why you are using Cortex-M microcontroller.
Why don't you adopt other microcontrollers such as 8-bit, 16-bit or MIPS or x86?
The background is that I plan to write a special article regarding Cortex-M on the Interface which is the monthly magazine of Japan published by CQ publishing. However, I cannot say why Cortex-M should be featured because Cortex-M is already famous and almost common sense of microcontrollers. I would like to get exclusive (or special) meanings to introduce Cortex-M nowadays. Please let me know the significance of Cortex-M.
Thank you and best regards,
Yasuhiko Koumoto.
Jens,
Like Yasuhiko's FYI for Renesas Synergy MCU S7,
Analog Devices' ADSP-CM40x, which is also based on the ARM®Cortex®-M4, can run up to 240 MHz, the maximum clock speed of the Renesas S7.
The ADSP-CM40x may not have much charm to you since the family is designed primarily for motor control and industrial applications and because of the price of Evaluation Boards. The S7 has twice the Flash and almost twice the SRAM and has more features such as security and human-machine interface. The S7 is under development. The ADSP-CM40x is in production, it was introduced between 2013 and first quarter of 2014, I don't have more accurate estimate of the date because I lost the notification.
The LPC4300 is a little slower but it's a two-core processor, Cortex M4F and Cortex M0 both having maximum clock of 204 MHz.
Goodwin
Hello all,
Big News.
Synergy MCU S7G2 and S3A7 are now available at Digi-Key.
We cannot buy by form of a part but can by form of a board.
Please refer to the following links.
Evaluation Boards - Embedded - MCU, DSP | Programmers, Development Systems | DigiKey
YSDKS3A7E20PWS2 Renesas Electronics America | YSDKS3A7E20PWS2-ND | DigiKey
Also, the flash speed of 240MHz S7G2 has been unveiled. It is 120MHz!.
The following article explains (sorry in Japanese)
1) Why was ARM architecture adopted?
2) Why was Cortex-M4 chosen instead of Cortex-M3?
3) Why was Cortex-M7 not selected?
Renesas DevCon 2015 - ルネサスがSynergyに注力する意味と意義とは? (4) なぜSynergyはARM Cortex-Mコアを採用したのか? | マイナビニュース
Renesas DevCon 2015 - ルネサスがSynergyに注力する意味と意義とは? (5) なぜ、Cortex-M3ではなく、Cortex-M4が採用されたのか? | マイナビニュース
For your information, I would add the short summary.
1) The new market will be it in which ARM microcontrollers had been already adopted and it which Renesas had not reseached yet.
To enter it, the peripherals were re-investigated and applied to customer convenience.
As the results, the software compatibility had been lost with traditional Reenesas microcontrollers and make the new ARM series.
2) Reneas had build both Cortex-M3 and Cortex-M4 platforms.
From the whole system power consumption aspect, Cortex-M4 was better than Cortex-M3.
The transition time between RUN and STANDBY modes was faster with Cortex-M4 than Cortex-M3.
The additional instructions (DSP/FPU) made Cortex-M4 higher performance.
3) The supply of Cortex-M7 had not been in time by about 6 months.
Because the flash speed is 120MHz, the 240MHz S7G2 is very fast and the clock scheme is simple.
The peformance of Cortex-M7 and Cortex-M4 had been almost the same but the power consumption of Cortex-M7 had been higher than Cortex-M4.
Best regards,
This is great information and wonderful news!
The $75 kit really looks great; it's affordable and offers quite a lot of features.
I think that Renesas would be able to make the Cortex-M7 perform 1.6 times the Cortex-M4, though.
-But we'll have to wait and see what they come up with.
Do you know how "wide" their GPIO ports are (eg. 16 pins or 32 pins per port) and when running at 240 MHz, how many clock cycles it takes before a pin changes from low to high or hight to low ?
Hello Jens Bauer,
The width of GPIO is at max. 172 depending on a packaging.
Almost all functional pins can be configured as GPIOs.
GPIO is driven by at max. 120MHz and change latency would be 1 cycle.
If you want the cycles from store execution to GPIO output, I don't know it.
"GPIO is driven by at max. 120MHz and change latency would be 1 cycle"
This indeed sounds very nice.
Just to confirm: It will be able to change the value of a single GPIO pin 240000000 times per second ?
(The reason for me asking, is that I'm very interested in fast parallel data transmission, thus I need a high speed and as many pins as possible).
I think a GPIO pin can keep high by 1 cycle and low by 1 cycle.
So, It will be able to change the value of a single GPIO pin 60000000 times per second at 120MHz.
The data width of one transaction is at max. 16 bits.
Please refer to the following picture.
Therefore 60MHz 16bit GPIO can get 120MB/sec.