ARM Community: ARM & ARM Partners at the Center of Embedded World – News and Video Review - ARM Community

It’s taken me a whole week to get over the buzz and excitement (and lots and lots of walking between Hall 9 and Hall 12!) that took place at the Embedded World in Nuremburg just over a week ago, although I didn’t have much time to put my feet up as I came straight home to co-present a webinar about the new Cortex-R processors that ARM announced a few weeks prior to the show.

I’ve decided to pull together some of the key stories from the show and also highlight some new videos that ARM did throughout the week and are currently collected together under the Embedded World 2011 playlist on the ARMflix YouTube channel. Look the column on the right hand side for the new clips.

The show looked to be as big a success as ever especially for ARM and the vast array of Connected Community Partners that were exhibiting at the show, and it was nice to meet up with some familiar faces and find out the latest news in terms of new product announcements and expanded partnership announcements.

On the first day of the show you may have seen Alan Tringham’s ‘ARM Events’ blog highlighting the news events that were hot of the press ‘Hold the Front Page! ARM Partners News Avalanche at Embedded World!’ which identified some strategic product announcements from Fujitsu, NXP, Keil, Xilinx, Microsoft and STMicroelectronics.

This was followed by the posting of the first videos from the show in Lori Kate Smith’s ‘Embedded blog’ - ‘High Performance Low Power MCUs for Talking, Washing and Flying’ where we saw product demos from TI, NXP and Microsemi. That reminds me that I might not want to pick Jean Anne for my side in the next robo-socccer/football competition ! By the way, the ARM Embedded Community blog is part of the new ARM Embedded Microsite that went live just before the show started with an introductory blog from Gary Atkinson.

The news release from STMicroelectronics was all about the extension and production availability of STM32L Ultra-Low-Power ARM Cortex™-M3 Microcontroller Series for ‘Energy-Lite’ Applications. I managed to get some time with Stephanie Ordan to find out a little more.



Of particular interest to me was the news that the STM32L’s USB drivers are ready for use in Continua Health Alliance certified applications. To quote from the ST press release, “The success of the USB interface in medical applications has led to standardization and the development of a dedicated class of device called the Personal Healthcare Device Class (PHDC). This new class enables health-related devices, such as exercise watches, blood pressure monitors, thermometers, weighing scales and glucose meters, to connect to a host and ease the communication between individuals and their fitness coach, or patients and their doctor” so you can expect to see a lot more ARM Cortex-M3 based devices in this health-related area very soon.

Alban Rampon’s blog ‘Embedded World: Driven by Innovation of ARM Partners’ published during the show gave an up-to the minute update from the show and highlighted the Freescale ARM Cortex-M4 Kinetic MCU offerings along with updates from Toradex, Nuvoton (who make Cortex-M0 based microcontrollers), QNX Software Systems and NVIDIA.

On the Wednesday of the show Energy Micro made an announcement about new low power Tiny Gecko & Zero Gecko (ARM Cortex-M0 and Cortex-M3 based devices) and Energy Friendly Radio products that were being introduced. I caught up with Rasmus Larsen to get an update and a demo of the Simplicity design product that sits alongside the product lines.



Whilst checking for more details of the Energy Micro new products I also came across their Seasons Greetings video from last December – it’s nice to see a management team able to both lead and entertain, and of course design great products based on the Cortex-M processor family.

Take a look at the ARMflix Embedded World channel for some of the other videos we took at the show including Mark Onions talking about the ARM Keil MDK-Pro announcement, QNX demos galore, Microsoft Compact 7 partner product offerings, Toshiba showing their new extended Cortex-M3 product line, and take a look at the demos that were being shown on the ARM booth.

I should really mention a special thank you to Stuart Waldron who is the unsung member of the team with me at the series of event we have visited over the past year; he carries all the camera gear, films all the clips, stays up late editing and uploading, and tries to make me look great in front of the camera. The last one of these he is clearly failing at, but all the rest I hope you would agree is done extremely well. He actually created a special out-takes version of the Mark Onions MDK-Pro video for me last week – it was very obvious it had been a long hard slog at the show and we were so tired. Next time you see me at an ARM Events show ask me to show you the clip on my ARM Powered tablet!

This show is always a fantastic opportunity to see what is new in the world of embedded technology and hopefully I’ve given you an overview of all the exciting changes that are taking place for ARM. Clearly ARM is right at the centre of the Embedded World !

Andy Frame, CPU Product Manager, ARM, is based in Cambridge and is fanatical about the success of the Cortex-M3 and how it is rapidly becoming the de-facto standard for 32-bit MCU’s. Since joining ARM in 1995, Andy has had a variety of roles from Software Tools Technical Training though to Business Development, joining the CPU product management team about two years ago to look after Cortex-M3.