ARM Community: ARM Partners Expand MCU Platforms in Industrial, Energy & Motor Control Apps - ARM Community

Welcome to my wrap up of the first day of Embedded World (EW) 2012, once again at the Nuremburg Messe, on a chilly February day.

I discovered recently that prior to becoming known in the nineteenth century as the "industrial heart" of Bavaria, Nuremberg (sometimes called Nurnberg) was known for its ‘traditional gingerbread products, sausages, and handmade toys’. I’ve tried the Nurnberg sausages many times (with a great dollop of strong mustard and sauerkraut) and they’re great. I will be on the lookout for more gingerbread related products this week – although saying that I did receive a larger gingerbread heart for winning on the Fujitsu ARM Cortex-M3 fruit machine last year.

There have been a fair few new product announcements around the show this year, across the broad range of the ARM Connected Community (CC) Partners, now more than 900 members! Find them at EW with our CC map.

A few weeks ago Infineon announced the ARM Cortex-M4 based XMC family of microcontrollers, targeting industrial applications in the field of renewable energy, factory and building automation, transportation, logistics and medical equipment. Gabriela Born spent some time with me this morning and explained some of the history of Infineon microcontrollers and more details on the XMC family and target markets.



Silicon Labs has today announced Precision32, a new family of 32-bit MCU products based on the successful Cortex-M3 processor. I asked Shahram Tadayon, Marketing Manager at Silicon Labs to tell me more about the product family and its unique features.



At the show this week STMicroelectronics are announcing the STM32 F0 – a new family of devices combining enhanced features and based on the ultra low-power ARM Cortex-M0 processor targeting extremely cost-sensitive applications.

I met with Stephanie Ordan to find out what was significant about this announcement.



After talking with Stephanie I also chatted with Daniel Colonna about some of the STM32 history and how a vision back in 2007 became the huge success that STM32 is today, then got a little insight into the future.



ARM today announced the availability of Version 3.0 of the ARM Cortex Microcontroller Software Interface Standard (CMSIS) which includes the new RTOS API. The RTOS API is designed to expand existing RTOS kernels with a standardized function set that supports multiple threads, resource control, time management, and data exchange. The RTOS API helps to solve the challenge that software programmers face when creating software components that rely on RTOS features and allows programmers to relay on standard RTOS features that are required in source code templates, middleware libraries, and other software components.

A video introduction to CMSIS Version 3.0 with Reinhard Keil is available from the ARMflix channel:



Another announcement made today came from another well established Cortex-M3 MCU supplier, Toshiba. Frank Malik gave me a demo of how the MotorMind software package can speed and simplify the development, prototyping and testing of embedded motor control applications.



With the usual sore and achy feet that’s all for now so I’ll sign off here – all ready for another day tomorrow.

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.