ARM Community: Design West 2012: Showcasing ARM based designs from Cortex-M0+ to Cortex-A8 - ARM Community

I don’t think the prospect of rain will affect attendance at the annual tech event now called Design West, which used to be ESC or the Embedded Systems Show - I’m still getting to grips with the name change. But with 250+ companies attending the show, many of whom are part of the ARM® Connected Community® (CC), I’m sure there will be some great technology to see and talk about. Take a look at the show floor map with the ARM Connected Community Partners highlighted to help you plan your route around the show.

At the show this week, Freescale and ARM are demoing Cortex^TM-M0+ silicon at booth 1607, following up from the launch event that took place a couple of weeks ago.

I first chatted with Thomas Ensergueix, Product manager at ARM about the Cortex-M0+ product and the launch.



To find out more about the Cortex-M0+, check out Joseph Yiu from ARM’s whitepaper - Introducing the ARM Cortex-M0+ processor: The Ultimate in Low Power

I also managed to catch up with Geoff Lees from Freescale to get an update on what’s been happening since we last spoke at the launch and to pick up on the key features and benefits of the Cortex-M0+









NXP, who also announced they were a licensee of the Cortex-M0+ at the launch, have recently posted a guest blog, Making Motor Control Easy with Low Cost, Fully Featured MCU Boards, to the ARM Embedded blog.

I spoke with Jason Kridner about the six screen video wall demo that makes use of a group of BeagleBoards, each one powered by an ARM Cortex-A8. He also showed me what was planned for the new BeagleBone product line.



I spoke with Miguel Morales at the Texas Instruments booth and he described the low power story behind the Stella robot that implements a Cortex-M3 and the Mentor Nucleus RTOS.



Silicon Labs have a white paper out just in time for the show titled, Selecting a 32-bit Microcontroller That Makes the Developer’s Job Easier.

There has been a big change this year at the front of the convention centre, where a big unsightly library has been knocked down and work is progressing to extend the convention centre. Something to look forward to for next year I guess.

Finally, I haven’t really talked about the weather for a while and over the last year I have enjoyed some great weather on my travels in the US, but it looks like my friendship with the weather has gone sour. Maybe if my umbrella had been able to tell me it was going to rain when I was over here, through a wireless connection to the “Internet of Things” somehow monitoring my TripIT scheduled; I wouldn’t be so upset – maybe next year!

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.