This article was first published on embedded beat, the blog platform of Freescale.com
Contributed by Joseph Yiu, Senior Embedded Technology Manager, ARM
When I look back at microcontrollers from the early 21st century, it is incredible to see how far we have come. Having worked at ARM since 2001, I have witnessed an extraordinary revolution in microcontroller technologies, and this is a great credit to both my colleagues at ARM as well as our partners, such as Freescale, who have licensed ARM IP to make such advanced devices.
I was delighted to partner with Freescale on a whitepaper accompanying the launch of the new Kinetis KV5x MCU family. These MCUs will be one of the first to use the newly launched ARM Cortex-M7 processor, ARM’s highest performance member of the energy-efficient Cortex-M family. I am excited to see the Freescale solution enter the market and see how it can be used to enable a wide range of applications, from motor controllers all the way to the Internet of Things (IoT).
Alongside a high-performance specification – made possible by a new 6-stage, superscalar pipeline – is a microarchitecture and feature set that is intended to give designers the power to configure the IP to suit a wide range of requirements. The Cortex-M7 processor brings industry leading scalability, configurability and expandability, allowing partners like Freescale to make a range of compelling, high-performance products. This is crucial for the Internet of Things (IoT), where diversity of technical requirements and widening challenges such as battery life and cost sensitivity are driving the need for SoCs which provide a range of distinctive product requirement profiles for end point devices. This is driving innovation and increasing the need for a range of solutions, of which the Cortex-M Series is at the heart.
In the whitepaper Exploring the ARM
Cortex-M7 Core: Providing Adaptability for the Internet of Tomorrow you can read more about the adaptability of the ARM Cortex-M7 processor, and see how Freescale have implemented the Cortex-M7 processor in the Kinetis KV5x MCU family to target a range of different use cases and end products. I am delighted to see Freescale launch another exciting product range based on ARM, and expand their very successful Cortex-M based Kinetis portfolio. I am confident that this partnership will continue to drive innovation as we move towards a more embedded and connected digital world.
We hope that you take as much pleasure in reading the whitepaper as Donnie and I took in writing it!