Last year Arm announced the M-Profile Vector Extensions (MVE) for the Armv8.1-M architecture, better known as Arm Helium technology, to give DSP-dependent embedded applications significant performance uplift.
Arm Development Studio 2019.b, our latest Platinum update, gives access to this technology to start early software development. Development Studio Platinum includes the first commercially available compiler for Helium, including vectorization optimizations techniques to ensure the most efficient use of this technology in your algorithms.
Developers can start to write and optimize code for future CPUs with Development Studio Platinum Edition and the latest Arm Compiler 6.13, which is integrated into the package. Code can be tested and debugged with a Fixed Virtual Platform and Arm Debugger. Basic example projects are also supplied to help you get started. Development Studio has full support for CMSIS software packs, which will be extended to support Helium targets as they become available.
This compiler release continues to support other advances to the Armv8-A architecture. The assembler and compiler intrinsic function support for bfloat16 and matrix multiplication instructions are necessary for accelerating performance in machine learning and similar arenas. General code optimization improvements, applicable to all Arm processors, also continue. For a summary of new features added to Arm Compiler 6.13, see here.
The 2019.b release also includes all updates from the recent 2019.1 public update of Development Studio, including general usability improvements to the IDE.
2019.1 saw changes to the mix of processors that are supported by the standard (Bronze, Silver, and Gold) editions as Armv8-A CPUs are implemented in a number of mass market devices. For example, in NXP's popular i.MX 8 series, different Arm CPUs are implemented for different performance points, often in heterogeneous configurations alongside a Cortex-M processor for real-time or other use cases. To enable developers working with these devices, we are happy to announce that debug support for Cortex-A35, Cortex-A57, and Cortex-A72 is extended to all editions, joining Cortex-A53 in this regard.
Compiler support and debug support for other Armv8-A processors remain the same.
Arm Development Studio 2019.1 is available to download now for Windows and Linux hosts. A free, fully featured 30-day evaluation license is also available.
If interested in Arm Development Studio Platinum Edition, 2019.b, please contact Arm directly.
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