ARM Community: Embedded - ARM Community

Recently our STMicroelectronics’ dedicated teams traveled to snowy Nuremberg to make the most of the show at Embedded World (EW) (check out some of ARM’s Andy Frame’s highlights)!

We welcomed EW 2013 visitors to a smarter world showcasing our leading embedded processing solutions based on an extensive microcontroller portfolio, from top performance high-end STM32 to Ultra-Low-Power devices.

ST teams were there to demonstrate and speak about Performance, Ultra-Low-Power, Energy Harvesting, Internet of Things, and ….to stand for life.augmented! For ST, life augmented represents making a positive and innovative contribution to people's life across the spectrum of sense, power, automotive products and embedded processing solutions. ST’s products improve people’s lives fr...

Phew, the second day of Embedded World is at a close. In yesterday’s blog we had the chance to meet up with Chris Styles from ARM, Terrance Bar from Oracle, Paul Zoratti from Xilinx and Dr. Majd Zoorob from PhotonStar, and I only walked 5793 steps – today I just about doubled that with 10502 steps and I haven’t yet ventured out into the brisk weather for some dinner and a well-deserved Weissbier!


Today I chatted with ...

Flights booked...check. Hotel booked...check. German phrase book... check. Comfortable walking shoes, blister cream and plasters... check, check and check. That’s it. I’m all set for Embedded World 2013! The annual pilgrimage to the European alter of all-things-embedded is firmly engraved into my calendar. While my colleagues are basking in the sun at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (current temperature 17ᴼC), I invariably travel to Embedded World in Nuremberg (current temperature 3ᴼC). I’m not in the least bit envious!

This year’s Embedded World looks likely to be one of the best from an ARM point of view. With over 2,000 discrete ARM processor-based devices now readily available to embedded developers I’m looking forward to seeing the ARM logo in every direction on the exhibition hall. It’s that prevalence that is behind the competition we’re running at the ARM booth (4-336) this year – “Where’s ARM” at EW.

All you need to do is snap a photograph of your favourite ARM Powered product and tweet each picture, along with the device and location, with the hashtag #WheresARM...

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 ...

Designing a differentiated motor drive is a complex task. Often these drives are single-processor that combine constraints of real-time embedded designs such as limited memory size and processing time, with the complications that motors bring - electrical noise and faults. When you add functional safety and certification requirements - the new design, test, and documentation deliverables require a significant amount of additional effort.

Today’s systems are also more complex and more dependent on the electronic control of motoring operations that need to meet strict industry functional safety standards. Whether it is the motor in control of the power steering assist in a car, controlling the lift and doors of an elevator, or a directly connected to the drum of a front load washing machine without belts or gears, functional safety in motor operation is fundamentally important. A motor system designed with functional safety will have a lower level of risk from improper operation. When a failure does occur, whether it is a random or systematic fault, the functionally safe design will detect this fault and respond to minimize impact.

International functional safety standards are defined to ensure that functional safety techniques are detailed for a specific industry sector and that these techniques are consistently applied. IEC 61508 is a basic safety standard which is the basis of all IEC and some ISO functional safety standards. It is u...

When I first saw the name of the series from Nordic Semiconductor, namely nRF51, I thought to myself “Oh God! These guys are doing great RF, but still use the good old 8051 processor -- what a shame!” Fortunately, I was misled by the family naming, and discovered Nordic picked just the right thing: an ARM CortexTM-M0!

Taking a bit more time to go into the details published by Nordic, I expect it to generate quite a lot of interest. With support for the latest protocols like Bluetooth Low-Energy and ANT+, great RF performance in terms of RX sensitivity and TX power, this series should be compelling to most companies looking for an RF link for medical, building automation or consumer applications. And last but not least, the achieved low-power consumption combined with limited peak consumption make it well suited for battery operation, making this family a great candidate to connect devices wirelessly to the ...

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...

I’m now back in a nice and sunny Cambridge and managed to find a few minutes to recap on the success of the 10th Embedded World show in Nuremburg last week. Following my updates on day one and day two (links are below), this wrap up blog and video give you an overall view of the show right from the beginning to a peaceful ending chilling out on the ARM Cortex™-M3 massage chair, and all of the other good bits in between.

Day 1: ARM Partners Expand MCU Platforms in Industrial, Energy & Motor Control Apps
Day 2: ARM at EW2012: Computer-on-Modules, Smart Grid, Wireless & Massage Chairs

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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 ...

A misty Santa Clara morning greeted the start day two of the 7th ARM TechCon. The focus of day two and three is on software and system development, following on from the hugely success day one which focused on chip design. Check out yesterday’s blog for more details ARM Partner Collaboration in Full Force at Chip Design Day, ARM TechCon 2011.

ARM’s success in Embedded really stood out today amongst the many ARM Connected Community partner exhibit booths and the many technical papers that were presented at the show today.

On the packed show floor (people were queuing to get in when the doors opened at 10:30), one of the first highlights greeting attendees was the CubeStormer II, the ARM powered Lego robot-based Rubik’s cube solver designed by ARM engineer David Gilday...

Last week at ESC Boston was a fun packed week for ARM Partners, and the first mention must go to Cypress Gen4 TrueTouch touch screen controllers. These look to be extremely impressive in terms of accuracy, response time, low power and noise reduction capability. And they are of course ARM Cortex-M processor-based. Check out the introductory video below and the product web page.



But what ESC Boston hammered home is that this is the year of the ARM Cortex-M4 MCU. As soon as you walke...

From refrigerator compressors to industrial pumps, micros that combine an ARM® Cortex™-M3 core with motor control firmware can help engineers rapidly create the optimum, low-energy motion control design.

In a world where we all want to cut costs and improve our green credentials variable speed BLDC motors play an increasingly important role. With suitable electronic control for adjusting their speed, power and torque according to demand and operating conditions, they not only cut energy costs and reduce carbon emissions but also help minimise acoustic and electrical noise. Can’t hear your washing machine or dishwasher? Then thank a variable speed motor (and some very clever drive electronics).

Designers are looking to capitalise on these benefits at the same time as building differentiating features into their products. But resources aren’t getting any more plentiful, time-to-market isn’t getting any shorter and end users don’t expect to pay more. A key issue for designers, therefore, is the software development/re-use trade-off to create the optimum system. Which is why ARM processor-based platforms with the flexibility to choose complete software control, majority hardware control and everything in between make things significantly simpler.

Toshiba ARM Cortex-M3 pro...

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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“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 ...