Telecommunications

January 11, 2007
ARM Cortex leads the way in deeply embedded systems!

Runa Mukherjee

NEW DELHI -- ARM recently announced at the Fall Processor Forum in San Jose, California, the new ARM Cortex-R4F processor to reduce the cost and design-time of future automotive electronic technology. The Cortex-R4F processor will enable ARM Partners to meet the stringent error-free safety standards and high performance requirements of automotive applications including next-generation Anti-lock Braking (ABS) and vehicle stability systems.

"ARM has been in the automotive segment since 10 years now, " said Boris Vittorelli, embedded solution manager – Europe, ARM. “We entered the market when the first systems were migrating to 32 bit and ARM7 jumped in with its presence. Now, we offer whatever features the market asks for.”

The new R4F processor is tailormade for the automotive segments and some other markets like safety and detection. The effective new feature is that the second step checks what the first step (the dual core lock step) is doing instantaneously.

The R4F processor builds upon the advanced features of the Cortex-R4 processor. These features include configurability during synthesis to optimise the processor for different applications through a high-resolution memory protection unit, caches, tightly-coupled memory, DMA and debug facilities. This configurability is provided without compromising the underlying ARM instruction set compatibility, maximising the reuse of existing software investments by application developers and third parties.

Talking about the safety standards, Boris Vitterolli comfirmed that the latest R4F processors are sound as far as the critical standards are concerned. The most critical standard of the notified bodies, IEC 61508 is incorporated in the ARM processors.

In India, like the other countries, the trend tends to remain the same, as the growth, demand and supply remain somehow interconnected throughout. The bottomline is the same, to drive the demand for the 32 bit. However, certain concerns like the communication protocols and density of traffic play a detterent in this field.

Another hindrance are the environmental concerns which ARM pays a lot of attention to. Yet, factors like the level of ecological gases and eco-clean gases effect powerful CPUs and the accuracy of algorithms. Thus it has to be reduced to a harmless level and ARM makes sure it adheres to the safety standards.

Says Vittorelli, “We go to these companies, talk to their engineers, who in turn ask us to licence their core and consequently, they buy developmental tools from us.”

“The Indian subsidiaries have begun to influence the world market. They were mainly the back office of the world, but they are moving forward today,” he said.

Talking about the most popular system today, Atul Arora, president – commercial operations, ARM India, said that multi-media and the infotainment systems are the best because they dont have to be restricted to environmental conditions.

For the future, the systems will be driven by integration as the vehicle networks are getting so complex and will get more so in the next 5 to10years.

Vittorelli explains that tough deeply embedded systems have their own set of problems as the temperature required is so high and also for electromagnetic compliance reasons, yet ARM system can be applied anywhere and everywhere.