ARM Community: ARM TechCon, Electronica and other Cortex-M MCU goodness - ARM Community

Shortly after ARM TechCon and now during Electronica seems like a good moment to write an update about ARM microcontrollers. Let me summarize which new products came out around the ARM developer conference and Electronica: ARM may not have a booth, but ARM Partners are working hard!

ARM TechCon
In the month before TechCon, Atmel launched the ARM^® Cortex™-M4 based SAM4L microcontroller series. This new family with picoPower^® technology boasts up to 28 CoreMark/mA thanks to inventive features like SleepWalking (!) and the possibility for modules to talk to each other without the CPU.

Also on the energy conscious front, Silicon Labs SiML1xx series uses innovative features to bring this new member of the Precision32™ family right at the lower consumption of ARM Cortex-M3 processors.

STMicroelectronics extended their product offering with more derivatives in the STM32 F3 series (Cortex-M4, mixed-signal MCU) now available to the mass market and adding 32kB and 16kB Flash in 20-pin configurations to the STM32 F0 (ARM Cortex-M0)

Fujitsu Semiconductor has announced two new microcontroller families to become available in 2013: the FM4 based on the ARM Cortex-M4 and FM0+ with ARM Cortex-M0+ CPU. With improvements on the existing FM3 family, Fujitsu aims to offer 570 products in 2013!

Renesas microcontrollers are now featuring ARM cores in their RZ family. This new series will be mainly targeted at high-speed data processing applications. Two sub-families will be created to address Graphics/HMI and connectivity.

Finally, Texas Instruments has created a chip to get ZigBee Smart Energy, ZigBee Home Automation and ZigBee Light Link standard in a single end-device. That chip is the CC2538 ZigBee network processor and is based on the ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller.

Electronica, until Friday 16^th November in Munich
In Hall 4 Stand 207, Microsemi will welcome you with new SmartFusion^®2, their newly released SoC FPGA family based on ARM Cortex-M processors. Andy Frame interviewed Paul Ekas about this new product.

NXP has redesigned their LPC serial peripherals to make them simpler and has added the ARM Cortex-M0+ CPU to their portfolio. This new LPC800 family is targeted at displacing 8-bit MCUs: bringing additional performance and capabilities with low pin count but also the latest Cortex-M core for best power efficiency. Amit Bhojraj presents this microcontroller in a video overview on LPCZone YouTube channel. You can find NXP in Hall 4 Booth 524-525. Andy also interviewed the Jan Jaap Bezemer, Marketing Director for MCUs at NXP.



I could also encourage you to meet Energy Micro in Hall A4 Booth 442. They are of course showcasing their lizard and low power expertise like on the video below showing a diving computer using the EFM32 Gecko ARM Cortex-M3 processor. They also recently launched The Lizard Lounge, technical forums dedicated to EFM32 Gecko microcontrollers. Finally, they plan on launching 3 (yes, three) new series in 2013 growing their product range by 50%.



Arrow Electronics (Hall A4 Booth 225) is offering a new service to enable machine-to-machine (M2M) applications. A real testimony of the ARM ecosystem at work, Arrow’s solution is based on Digi iDigi® Device Cloud™ and Freescale Kinetis L series of MCUs (ARM Cortex-M0+). I had a demo of this tool, and your sensors can be accessed from anywhere via the free software gateway. Paid-for hardware gateways are also available once your modules are developed and you want to get rid of the energy hungry workstation/laptop.

As further reading, I could advise an article explaining how you can use a Vodafone 3G dongle to enable your mbed to communicate in most circumstances. Whether by SMS, web service or tweets, you get easy access to developing for the Internet of Things (M2M comms).

ARM Technology Symposia are coming in your region. This is a great opportunity to learn more about ARM and our Partner products. Do say hi if you see me in the Paris event on December 13^th (have a look at the technical tracks and register for free)!

Who did I forget this time?! Please let me know so and I’ll be happy to correct that!

Related Blogs

• ARM Cortex-M MCUs: New Partners, Resources, Tools & Books
• ARM TechCon 2012 Day 2 - Great Keynotes, Samsung Innovation, and Cadence on Cortex-M0
• ARM Cortex-M0 Swiftly Rides the Airwaves
• ARM Cortex-M0+: More than a low-power processor
• ARM Cortex-M0+ and the importance of a plus sign

Alban Rampon - 冉昂理, Partnership Marketing Specialist, ARM, is an electronics engineer experienced in Automotive as well as Consumer and Industrial product design. He loves spending a lot of his time helping engineers worldwide with specialist questions in electronics and microcontrollers/networks in particular. Being a keen trainer helps Alban giving straight and understandable answers, always thriving to the highest standard of quality. Today Alban uses both his technical knowledge and customer dedication to develop and strengthen ARM Connected Community relationships. Through networking and promotion, he helps ARM Partners getting successful products to the market. You are very welcome to drop Alban an email if you have any question or wish to report inappropriate content/behaviour on the Forums/Blogs.