Chapter 1 History

ARM Assembly Language Programming by Mazidi et al

1.1 Intro. To Microcontroller

• Microprocessors are connected to external RAM, ROM and I/O.

• Microcontrollers have the CPU, RAM,ROM, and I/O devices on a single IC chip (SOC-System on a Chip; or Micro Controller Unit (MCU)).

Three Traditional Groupings

• Desktops

• Servers

• Embedded Systems– Special purpose computers

Microcontroller History

• 1980s and 1990s Intel and Motorolla dominated.

• Intel—x86, Pentium and more.

• Motorolla is now Freescale.—68xxxx

• These were 32 bit processors.

Microcontroller History (cont.)

• Low end (8 bit controllers) dominated by 68HC11 and the 8051 from Intel.

• NOW —Leaders in volume for 8 bits– Microchip—PIC– ATMEL—AVR

• Late 1990s– ARM challenged dominance of 32 bit market.

• Currently Freescale has the PowerPC and Coldfire processors, but ARM dominates.

Current History

• 32 bit—ARM, AVR32 (ATMEL), ColdFire (Freescale) MIPS32 MIPS Technology, PIC 32(Microchip), Power PC, TriCore (Infineon), SuperH (Renesas—Japan)

• 16-bit—MSP430, HCS12 (Freescale), Pic 24 (Microchip), dsPIC (Microchipt

• 8-bit—8051, AVR (Atmel), HCS)* (Freescale), PIC16, PIC18.

ARM History

• 1982– Acorn

• 1983 –Acorn and VLSI began designing ARM

• 1985—Acorn Computer Group—first commercial RISC processor– ARMv1—4Mhz, 2500 transistors

More ARM History

• 1987—Acorn’s ARM—first RISC processor for low-cost PCs.

• 1989—ARMv3• 25Mhz• 4KB cache

More ARM HISTORY (cont.)

• 1990 Adv. RISC Machines (ARM) spins out of Acorn and Apple. VLSI Technology is an investor—plan to create a new microprocessor standard.

• 1991—embeddable RISC core, ARM6; used ARMv3 architecture.

• 1992 GEC Plessy and Sharp license ARM technology

More ARM History (cont.)

• 1993—Ti license ARM technology and ARM introduces ARM7 core.

• 1995 –Thumb architecture announced—32 bit performance at 16-bit system cost

• 1996-- ARM 8 10 introduced; ARM and Microsoft work together—Windows CE extended to ARM architecture.

• 1997—Hyundai, Lucent, Philip, Rockwell and Sony license ARM technology.

• ARM9TDIMI family announced.

More History

• 1998—HP, IBM, Matsushita, Seiko Epson and Qualcomm license ARM technology.– Synthesizable ARM 7 TDMI coreARM– partners shipped 50 million ARM-based products.

• 1999—LSI Logic, STMicroelectronics and Fujitsu license ARM technology– Synthesizeable ARM 9E with enhanced signal processing

announced.

• 2000—Agilent, Altera, Micronas, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Sanyo, Triscend and ZTEIC license ARM Technology– SecurCore family for smartcards launched– TSMC and UMC became members of ARM Foundry Program

Today --History

• Currently its revenue comes from licenses.• Does not own start of the art fabrication facility.• Business Model—sell intellectual property (IP).• ARM is CPU of choice for cell phones and hand

held devices.• ARM7 is their high end; ARM Cortex is being

used as competitor to 8 and 16 bit microcontrollers.

Peripherals

• Many versions of ARM architecture.• Peripherals are added by each manufacturers

– For example, the I/O ports, serial port UART, timer, ADC, SPI, DAC, I2C.

– Compatibility becomes a software issue—but there are peripheral libraries provided by some software vendors. (Keil, or IAR).

– In recent years, ARM does provide IP for some peripherals, but adoption is not mandatory.