ARM Cortex-A7 processor...It's all about right-sized equipment.
In Part 1 of this blog we saw how right-sizing of air conditioning is vitally important because it performs three different functions…
Playing with DS-5 CE and BeagleBone Black
The ARM® Development Studio 5 (DS-5™) Community Edition (CE) has been extended to support the community of ARM Embedded Linux users, and it now works on Apple Mac hosts too! DS-5 Community…
How small can small MCUs get?
I was asked to contribute a quote for a press release that our friends at Freescale made a few days ago. When I read it I didn't fully appreciate just how tiny their little device is. Or at least I did…
CoreMark and Compiler Performance
Chinese Version 中文版：CoreMark 和编译器性能CoreMark is quickly gaining traction as the de facto benchmark for CPU performance. It is freely available, easy to compile and run, and returns a single value result…
ARM CoreLink 500 System IP — Enabling 64-bit big.LITTLE
This is an exciting time for consumers as they anticipate a further step change in their mobile computing experience, and in the supporting infrastructure. To support the launch of the new ARM® Cortex…
8-bit versus 32-bit MCUs - The impassioned debate goes on
Recently I read a post by Steve Leibson that referred a very passionate on-going debate on the "ARM Based Group" on LinkedIn from a few industry veterans about the pros and cons of 8-bit versus…
ARM Cortex-M0 Swiftly Rides the Airwaves
When I first saw the name of the series from Nordic Semiconductor, namely nRF51, I thought to myself "Oh God! These guys are doing great RF, but still use the good old 8051 processor -- what a shame!"…
Cortex-M System Design Kit - Now what to do with two more wishes?
Many recent licensees of ARM Cortex-M are new to the ARM architecture. For them, a design kit that is tailor-made for Cortex-M processors and delivers a short learning curve, reduced time to market and…
Hey Hobbyists, dust off your breadboards - DIP package is back!
Really, it is a blast from the past. Soon you can get ARM Cortex-M0 microcontrollers in a DIP28 package, along with SOP20, TSSOP20 and TSSOP28 packages.
ARM Cortex-M MCUs: New Partners, Resources, Tools & Books
2012 has been like the last few years: very rich in new ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers as well as collateral and tools making it easier to make the most of them. Here is a summary of the year so far, if…
Shrink Your MCU code size with GCC ARM Embedded 4.7
GNU Tools for ARM embedded processors, or GCC ARM Embedded for short, version 4.7 is now available.
The 'big' impact of 'LITTLE' processing to electricity bills everywhere
The ARM Cortex-A7 processor and big.LITTLE processing announcement are game changers for the "always on' home networking and consumer applications. Developers can now choose the right size processor for…
ARM Cortex-M0+: More than a low-power processor
This week sees the launch on the Cortex-M0+ processor-based Freescale Kinetis L family of MCUs just two months after the official launch of this latest addition to the Cortex-M processor series.
The…
The un'NXP'ected LPC800
I take a deeper look at NXP's mini-tiny-LPC800. With NXP being one of our lead-partners on the ARM Cortex-M0+, and also previously on the Cortex-M0, I was really excited to see what they came up.
Killing Pixels - A New Optimization for Shading on ARM Mali GPUs
Invisible pixels are expensive ...
OpenGL ES 3.0 Takes Mobile to the Next Level
When I was asked how OpenGL® ES 3.0 would improve my buddy's ARM® Mali™-T604 powered Nexus 10 I sighed, looking in exasperation at my unknowing friend. How could he, a self-proclaimed…
Mali-V500 video processor: reducing memory bandwidth with AFBC
ARM's new video processor was publicly launched at Computex recently and we introduced a bunch of new technology in that device. Here I'd like to discuss just one of these new features: …
Highly Efficient Video Coding with ARM
H.265, more popularly known as HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding), is the newest addition to the long list of video codecs that have evolved in the last two decades. HEVC promises improved video quality…
OpenGL ES 3.0 on Mali GPUs - Business as usual
Last year I had an opportunity to cover the award-winning products based on ARM MaliTM-T604 including Google's Chromebook and Nexus 10. Since then, those devices have reached millions of consumers…
Flipping the FLOPS - how ARM measures GPU compute performance
It's time we deal with the measurement of compute performance in GPUs. My latest ARM blog covers the issue of Floating-point Operations Per Second - FLOPS, or GFLOPS or TFLOPS. …
Benchmarking floating-point precision in mobile GPUs
When we talk about GPU performance we usually talk about speed. But, In my next few blogs, I talk about benchmarking the quality of GPU floating-point arithmetic.