ARM

The
Architecture
Thomas DeMeo
Thomas Becker

Agenda

What is ARM?

ARM History

ARM Design Objectives

ARM Architectures

What is the ARM Architecture?

Advanced RISC Machines

ARM is a 32-bit RISC ISA
Most popular 32-bit ISA on the market
Found in nearly every kind of consumer
electronic:
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90% of all embedded 32-bit RISC processors

98% of all cell phones
Hard drives, routers, phones, tablets, handheld
video game consoles, calculators, and more

Recently introduced 64-bit architecture and

ISA, labelled 'AArch64' or 'A64'

A Bit of History...

A company named Acorn Computers had

released the BBC Micro in 1981

The Micro used the 6502

Became very popular in the British
educational system

Soon dominated by the IBM PC

Acorn's next steps

Acorn was focused on meeting the needs of

the business community, and this meant
they needed more power.
After trying all of the 16 and 32-bit
processors on the market they found none to
be satisfactory for their purposes. The data
bandwidth was not sufficiently greater than
the current 8-bit 6502.
They decided to go solo.

Acorn's next steps

So Acorn decided to make their own.

Inspired by the Berkeley RISC Project, which

was the basis of the SPARC processor,
Acorn figured that if some graduate students
could build a 32-bit processor, so could they.

In 1983, the Acorn RISC Machine project

had been established.

Acorn's next steps

The 32-bit world

Reputable R&D department

A Bit of History
ARM first reached silicon in 1985, and worked
just as intended. However, the architecture
didn't make it into the commercial domain
until 1987.
The delay was caused by problems in design
and production of an ARM-based system,
and not in the chip itself. Acorn's financial
woes at the time also contributed to this.

Advanced RISC Machine

ARM was founded as a joint venture

between Acorn Computers, Apple Computer,
and VLSI Technology.
The company was intended to further the
development of the Acorn RISC Machine's
RISC Chip

Apple Newton Project next to Apple

iPhone

Advanced RISC Machine

Early 1990's financially stable. Static

processor version, ARM2aS.

Interest in ARM design leads to the

formation of ARM Holdings as we know
today.

ARM began licensing its designs to chip

foundries, where they would receive a
royalty

ARM Design Objectives

Designed as a small scale processor

Good all-around performance

Fixed instruction length, load/store model

BASIC led to quick prototyping, but was less

flexible when it came to hardware design

ARM Design Objectives

Short design time

Easily customized designs

ARM Design Objectives

High Performance, Low Price, Low Power
Consumption

Designed for price-to-performance ratio, not

for being the most powerful
o

A6 cost approximately $1 per 1 MIPS

Relatively Low Transistor Count

o

ARM2 had 30K transistors

ARM6 had 35K transistors

ARM7 had 74K transistors

ARM9 had 111K transistors

The ARM Architecture

Created by Sophie Wilson

General RISC design
Additional features
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conditional instruction execution

interrupt subsystem
powerful indexed addressing modes
2-priority level interrupt subsystem
32-bit Barrel Shifter

37 registers
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30 general purpose
Program Counter

ARM Architecture CPU Modes

User
System (ARMv4 and above)
Monitor (security extensions only)
Supervisor
Abort
Undefined
IRQ - Interrupt Request

ARM Architecture Versions

ARMv1
ARMv2
ARMv3
ARMv4
ARMv5
ARMv6
ARMv7
ARMv8
o
o

adds 64-bit architecture

newer exception system

The Thumb Instruction Set

Improve code density

16-bit instructions
Implicit instructions and limited functionality
Useful with size limitations
Thumb-2 (2003) added 32-bit instructions

ARM Numbering

ARM Holdings adopted a new numbering

scheme
Single number represents the processor
core macrocell, main component, ARM6
Incremented from generation to generation
Two-digit number represents self-contained
chip, ARM60
Three-digit number integrates the processor
macrocell and other ARM macrocells and
logic, ARM250

ARM7

ARMv3, ARMv4, and ARMv5 architectures

Introduced the Thumb instruction set
130 MIPS on 130 nm technology
Still quite popular

Examples of ARM7 products

Nintendo Game Boy Advance

Nintendo DS
LEGO Mindstorms NXT
Apple iPod
Roomba
Sirius Satellite Radio receiver
Most vehicles

ARM9

ARMv4 and later ARMv5 architecture

First ARM processor to move from Von
Neumann architecture to Harvard
architecture

Decreased heat and power consumption

compared to ARM7

Pipeline was changed from 3 stages to 5

Examples of ARM9 products

Nintendo DS
PSP
Nintendo Wii
Nokia N-Gage
Western Digital MyBook external hard
drives

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

ARM11

ARMv6 architecture
Decreased heat and power consumption
compared to ARM9

SIMD instructions for increased media

support

Physically addressed cache

Redesigned pipeline allowing for faster clock

Examples of ARM11 products

Nintendo 3DS
iPhone
iPod Touch
Zune HD
Samsung Galaxy
Kindle 2
Raspberry Pi

Current ARM Profiles

Cortex-A
"Application"

Cortex-R
"Real-Time"

Cortex-M
"Microcontroller"

Future

Cortex A15 MP
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Out-of-order speculative superscalar design

Supports up to 2 clusters with up to 4 cores per
cluster
Dual Core
Late 2012
5X performance of current smartphones
Addressing for up to 1TB of RAM
Tegra 4, 10X Tegra 2

Quad core slated for 2013

Questions?