ARM Community: Time to Spice Up Embedded - ARM Community

The first few months of the year are a busy time for the electronics industry. Amid the bright neon lights of Las Vegas in January CES unveils to the world the latest in must-have consumer devices, from 3D TVs and ARM processor-powered tablets to the weird and wonderful gadgets we didn’t know we needed - but will all want next year.

Then in the balmy sunshine of fashionable Barcelona comes MWC in February, where the latest and greatest ARM Powered® smartphones with multicoloured touchscreen technology jostle with the latest gesture recognition technology for their place in the limelight.

Finally in March comes Embedded World in Nurnberg which is full to bursting with...well...tiny MCUs and other embedded technology which go fairly unnoticed by the big flashy boys in Las Vegas and Barcelona. Up until now, making embedded technology sexy has been about as difficult as standing on one leg with your eyes shut. It couldn’t be done!

But times are changing! (Embedded technology becoming sexy that is, the one leg eyes shut thing is still impossible. Go ahead try it). For example, where would your 3D TV be without an intelligent MCU in the remote or to look after the power saving functions? As for Smartphones, what do you think powers the touchscreen? In all probability an ARM Cortex-M0 or Cortex-M3 processor, and what do you think handles the hidden baseband modem in 99% of all phones? Yes, an ARM Cortex-R series processor. The list goes on from intelligent motor control to automotive engine management, to medical and industrial systems. All vital embedded technology applications.

Smart ARM Powered systems enable all of this technology to work seamlessly together, from the high-performance Cortex-A applications processors and Mali™ graphics technology to the CoreLink™ system integration IP and of course the tiny Cortex-M embedded microcontrollers, to ensure that our technology can provide the ideal solution to meet every application.

So it’s time for ARM embedded technology to strut its stuff on the world stage. This year’s Embedded World looks set to see even more ARM technology on display from the ARM Connected Community members across the show floor, from Cortex-M processor-based MCUs, to real-time, fault-tolerant Cortex-R processors for automotive applications, to Cortex-A processor-based single board computers (SBC) that are bringing high performance processing to embedded applications – all within the low power footprint required of an embedded device. A breadth and capability no other architecture can match.

You can see my colleague Alban's blog for more about the Embedded World offerings.

Alan Tringham, Senior Corporate Marketing Manager, ARM, Since joining ARM in 2000 Alan has been responsible for marketing communications for the company’s processor division, and more recently its expansion into the embedded space where the ARM processor architecture, and its growing number of supporters, looks poised to consolidate the market.