The ARM Cortex-M0+ processor is the latest addition to the ARM Cortex processor family and consumes 9µA/MHz on a 90nm LP process. Early licensees of the processor include Freescale and NXP Semiconductor.
The processor will be used in microcontrollers for communication, management and maintenance across a multitude of wirelessly connected devices.
The processor has been redesigned from the ground up to add a number of features including single-cycle IO to speed access to GPIO and peripherals, improved debug and trace capability and a 2-stage pipeline to reduce the number of CPI (cycles per instruction) and improve flash accesses, further reducing power consumption.
The Cortex-M0+ processor uses the same C friendly programmer's model, and is binary compatible with existing Cortex-M0 processor tools and RTOS. Along with all Cortex-M series processors it has support from the ARM Cortex-M ecosystem and software compatibility enables simple migration to the higher-performance Cortex-M3 and Cortex-M4 processors.
The Cortex-M0+ processor can used with the Artisan 7-track SC7 Ultra High Density Standard Cell Library and PMK (Power Management Kit) to make use of the low power features of the processor.
The Cortex-M0+ processor is supported by the ARM Keil Microcontroller Development Kit, which integrates the ARM compilation tools with the Keil µVision IDE and debugger as well as third-party tool and RTOS vendors including CodeSourcery, Code Red, Express Logic, IAR Systems, Mentor Graphics, Micrium and SEGGER.
This story was originally posted by EE Times.
