ARM Community: Embedded - ARM Community

After a long and bleak winter in the UK it was great to arrive back into San Francisco and be greeted by some great sunny weather. The McEnery Conference Centre in San Jose was once again the host to the Design West conference. The building has had a bit of an overhaul since I was last here, and while there is still some construction work taking place outside, the inside is looking greatly improved with a much more modern feel to it.

The show was pretty mixed in terms of how busy it was on the show floor but I happened across this blog from Max Maxfield (who describes himself is his bio as: “Clive ‘Max’ Maxfield is six feet tall, outrageously handsome, English and proud of it. In addition to being a hero, trendsetter, and leader of fashion, he is widely regarded as an expert in all aspects of electronics (at least by his mother)” over on the all programmable planet website who detailed his busy schedule. Hopefully not everyone is having such a busy time! I’ve been meaning to meet with Max for a while as I find his blogs most entertaining and he is also a fellow Sheffield Hallam University alumni but have never managed to catch up with him – from the schedule I can se...

CoreMark is quickly gaining traction as the de facto benchmark for CPU performance. It is freely available, easy to compile and run, and returns a single value result, simplifying performance analysis. As with Dhrystone in the 90’s, we are seeing developers attempting to determine compiler efficiency based on CPU performance. This determination can often be misleading as CoreMark, just like Dhrystone before it, is a small special purpose benchmark targeting CPU performance rather than a broad-based embedded software workload. The value of CoreMark for determining compiler efficiency depends on how closely your application resembles the benchmark. Recently, customers have been asking for CoreMark performance data based on compilation by the ARM Compiler, hence, we decided to investigate CoreMark and its potential value as a compiler effectiveness indicator. This blog describes our experience, which resulted in significant CoreMark performance improvements in the latest version of the ARM Compiler.

Background
Historically, benchmarks allowed comparison of compiler effectiveness and CPU performance. The first popular benchmark, SIEVE, calculated just prime numbers and was published in January 1983 in BYTE Magazine. Later, Dhrystone and Whetstone became popular. Dhrystone focuses on integer and string operations whereas Whetstone primarily uses floating point arithmetic. Today’s compiler technology allows calculation of many of ...

The busy time of Electronica and ARM Technology Symposia is now behind us, and I finally get the opportunity to have a deeper look the latest release of NXP: their mini-tiny-LPC800. NXP being one of our lead-partners on the ARM® Cortex™-M0+, and also previously on the Cortex-M0, I was really excited to see what they came up with and how they took advantage of our latest Cortex-M processor.

First of all, I must admit I wasn’t expecting them to set this family on the very lowend, even below their Cortex-M0 LPC1100 series. When we designed the Cortex-M0+ we aimed at offering at least as much the Cortex-M0 does, while adding capabilities to support low-power design even better and to address a wider scope of applications. I was anticipating an upgrade of ...

Near Field Communications (NFC) is becoming more pervasive in our society, driven in large part by NFC chips inclusion on many Android phones. As consumers become more aware of NFC technology, demand for NFC features on a variety of other applications increases. Ticketing, security access, loyalty cards and closed-loop micro systems are just a few examples of applications that are adopting NFC technology.

NXP is the world leader in Near Field Communications, with a full portfolio of secure microcontrollers and a strong innovation pipeline. 1.2 Billion people live in urban areas where NXP’s contactless ticketing solutions make public transit more convenient and efficient, and 200M+ people rely on NXP technology to enter their offices and hotels every day.

In order to help our customers implement NFC in their applications, NXP offers design examples on 3 different ARM® Cortex™-M cores. These 3 examples share a common design “backbone” made up of a contact and/or contactless card reader communicating over a serial port to an ARM microcontroller, which either drives a touchscreen LCD panel for user interface or talks to a PC-based back-end system via UART or Et...

The Internet revolution has connected billions of PCs. There is now a second revolution in Internet connectivity. The Internet-of-Things (IoT) is happening all around us. A wave of billions and billions of devices are being connected. Devices, as simple as a light bulb and as complex as a jet engine, become more manageable once they have become connected devices. By becoming connected, devices can be controlled from a distance. Their settings and operations can be changed based on input from other connected devices. They can transmit information about their status, for example their location, or whether they need maintenance. The value of connecting devices is coming to greatly outweigh the rapidly decreasing costs of interconnecting them.

Connectedness brings the option of computer control. Devices that were previously standalone are opening to the creativity of a new generation of programmers. We can now have apps for devices. This is opening an entirely new world to developers. With their creativity unleashed, they are adding exciting new functionality to what have often been rather dull, unconnected devices.

Need for user interfaces with more complex information
With conne...

This year’s Design West (formerly ESC) from March 26-29th promises something for every designer with seven different Summits. ARM and its Partners have strong representation at ESC, Android and Multicore. Following on the strong showing at this year’s Embedded World (blog), ESC has over 70 ARM® Partners including nine Partners in the annual ARM Connected Community (CC) Pavilion in the expanded ARM booth #1127.

With the excitement following last week’s ARM Cortex™-M0+ processor launch, the most energy efficient ARM processor available (blog) with lead Part...

World-wide sales of 8- and 16-bit MCUs continue to head south while their 32-bit counterparts, in particular, 32-bit ARM® CortexTM series processor-based counterparts, are charting a distinctly northerly flight path. The reasons for this are well understood - more and more developers are discovering the benefits of the ARM Cortex architecture, the myriad of MCU solutions on offer and the vast 3rd third party ecosystem that provides nearly unlimited, off-the-shelf design options (read and go home early days) for ‘the software guys’.

What’s not so clear is that while this trend is all well and good for the seasoned 32-bit developer, the humble 8- and 16-bit guy who since time immemorial has trusted his pay cheque to a simple, low-power, low-cost, no-fuss MCU, is still in many cases, reluctant to change. And who can blame him – the thought of a bloated BOM cost, sky-rocketing run currents and a prolonged development cycle littered with stacks and stacks of…well…stacks and other strange ...

This May, Tufts Hybrid Racing Team (THR) will compete in the Formula Hybrid competition; an international student-engineering event held annually at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Loudon, New Hampshire.

Formula Hybrid is a design and engineering challenge for undergraduate and graduate college and university students. The competition is organized by Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth and carries the endorsement of the Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc. (SAE) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE).

Each team must design, build, and compete an open-wheel, single-seat, plug-in hybrid racecar. This car must conform to a formula that emphasizes drive train innovation and fuel efficiency in a high-performance application.

The emphasis of the Formula Hybrid Competition is on the engineering of the hybrid drive system and vehicle dynamics to maximize performance in three different tests, acceleration, autocross and endurance.


The LPC1768 mbed
This year Tufts Hybrid Racing will debut a brand new vehicle, the THR12....

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 ...

以变频空调为代表的变频家电经过了突飞猛进的发展已进入了市场普及期。根据中怡康的统计数据，2011冷冻年度的变频空调总产量约为2500万台。支持三相永磁同步马达压缩机(PMSM)驱动的180度直流变频方案正受到很多中国白色家电厂商的追捧，以实现对提高精度和电机控制效率以及降低噪声的要求。

永磁同步电机的模型是一个多变量、非线性、强耦合系统，为了实现动态过程的矢量控制，转子磁场定向控制是一种常用的解耦控制方法。定子电流被分解成：直轴电流 Id（用于产生磁场，与转子的磁场叠加）和交轴电流 Iq（用于控制转矩）。马达转速可对负载的变化做出精确而快速的反应从而进行位置控制。利用坐标变换把定子及转子变量变换到一个旋转坐标系中可以降低马达方程的复杂性，包括Park/Clarke变换和逆变换。 另外在高速阶段采用磁场定向控制很难达转速要求，多采用弱磁控制法以实现高速控制，降低电动机的励磁电流而弱磁增速。

基于ARM Cortex-M3内核的32位RISC MCU正越来越多的普及在这类要求高�...

The rising complexity of embedded systems continues to drive the need for MCU architectures and development tools that abstract low-level design details and enable developers to quickly bring new products to market. In addition, the shorter lifespan of products on the market requires being able to introduce new products faster with each new generation. To succeed, you must consider not only how long it will take to develop a new product but also how quickly existing products can be adapted to meet the changing needs of customers.

For example, what most customers want today – typically called the sweet spot of the market – shifts every few months. To hold market share, you need the ability to create product upgrades and enhancements across MCU platforms to match these changing expectations. Consequently, even during the design of a new product, engineers already need to take into account what next-generation device requirements are going to be.

Key factors to consider when choosing an MCU include: design reuse, software code compatibility, performance and power, advanced algorithmic-code compatibility, inte...

I keep an eye on press releases that mention ARM and one that caught my eye a few weeks ago was from a great company called SteelSeries; they build products for dedicated gaming enthusiasts. The release announced their latest mouse, the Sensei:


As the title says, this is the sort of device that, a few years ago, you may never have thought of as something that would need an ARM® processor. But as with many other products that embody a sensor they are rapidly becoming more intelligent.

This little beast embeds inside it an ARM Cortex™-M3 processor-based STMicroelectronics STM32 MCU and I g...

Do you have a need to add USB to your embedded system, yet don't have the time to become an expert on USB? If so you're not alone. When you dig into the nuances of USB you will quickly find that developing a USB-enabled product is a fairly demanding task. While the hardware is simple enough the software can be quite complex. Firmware engineers find that developing the proper software on the device side requires extensive knowledge of the USB interface specification, and implementation of standard device classes like Human Interface Design (HID) or Mass Storage Class (MSC) is an additional layer of complexity, and what's the best use of your time? Becoming an expert on USB, or developing the core application of your product?

For engineers looking to rapidly implement a USB interface using HID or MSC I have found a refreshingly simple solution from NXP. The Cortex-M3 processor-based LPC1343 and t...

As Richard York pointed out in his recent blog, the ARM Cortex-M processor series is now 7 years old during which time it has achieved huge success. Its instruction set makes it extremely suited to microcontrollers (MCUs) and embedded applications, but you can also find it as a companion processor to beefier Cortex-A processor-based applications. An example is the Texas Instruments OMAP™ 5 platform which includes two ARM Cortex-M4 processors for offloading real-time processing from the Cortex-A15 processor to improve low-level control and responsiveness of mobile devices.

In this post, we will concentrate on standalone MCU devices and highlight a few items to consider when choosing the most appropriate processor for your next design. As the ARM Cortex-M series has hundreds of references available, we will not be able to pinpoint the exact part number you need, but rather help your selection.

For this, we will look at:

CPU Choice - On-chip pe...

The Arduino platform is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. Not to mention there are a lot of interesting developments going on around the Arduino that are worth a closer look.

Arduino can sense the environment by receiving input from a variety of sensors and can affect its surroundings by controlling lights, motors, and other actuators. The microcontroller on the board is programmed using the Arduino programming language (based on Wiring) and the Arduino development environment. Arduino projects can be stand-alone or they can communicate with software running on a computer (e.g. Flash, Processing, MaxMSP).

Since its introduction the open source software world has taken to the Arduino software and hardware and have built many more platforms, of those the ARM-based ones are the most frequent in number and very powerful. One example I particularly like is the board created by former students of MIT, Leaf Labs.

Of course some of the derivatives are true to the Arduino spirit and some are not, those are the ups and downs of the open source world. Nevert...

So it’s been a few weeks since my last USA visit and I’m pleased to say that everyone should be well and truly home from the Embedded Systems Conference San Jose by now, including my new friends from a galaxy far, far away – Nork and his Captain, who got stranded here just in time to visit the ESC show and needed to find some low power technology to help then get home .. take a look at our close encounter of the ARM kind.

There were a few more videos that we shot at the show that didn’t make it into the daily blogs, more software tools related this time. Firstly I met with Andy Beeson from CodeRed Technologies to find out the latest news about the RedSuite4 product.

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What a great start to the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose this week as ARM Cortex technology won a flurry of awards at the 21st EDN Innovation Awards show on Monday night. I was lucky enough to be at the event and, on behalf of ARM, picked up the award for the Best Processor for the ARM Cortex-M4.

The award winning ARM technology came in the form of the EM773 energy-metering IC from NXP Semiconductors which utilises a ...

“The pen may be mightier than the sword”, so said playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton in1839 (remember that for your next pub quiz). Fast forward 115 years and the phrase “The book is mightier than a few hours head-scratching and googling” is certainly more appropriate, especially when the book in question is 'The Definitive Guide to the ARM® Cortex™-M0 Processor.'

The guide, written by Joseph Yiu which is now available from all good bookshops, is required reading for embedded software developers, embedded product designers and students taking an embedded systems design course where the ARM Cortex-M0 processor is used. 'The Definitive Guide to the ARM Cortex-M0' follows the success of Joseph’s previous bestseller, 'The Definitive Guide to the ARM Cortex-M3', now on its second edition!

As well as providing engineers with a thorough understanding of how the Cortex-M0 processor works, with detailed information on the programmer’...

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 ...

32-bit microcontrollers continue to move into more every day devices that demand the high performance that a 32-bit architecture can provide in the same power footprint as 8/16-bit architectures. Additionally, OEMs require cost effective solutions to meet consumers’ rising expectations. Consumers unknowingly use ARM microcontrollers every day in devices such as smartphones, washing machines and even airplanes. Embedded World 2011 (EW11) is showcasing innovative ARM-powered solutions meeting these demands from a multitude of ARM Connected Community Partners.

TI highlights MCUs in wireless
It’s no longer just ...