ARM adds Helium to M52 core for AIoT, FuSa
ARM has launched its smallest microcontroller core with Helium DSP and custom extensions to boost machine learning at the edge.
The M52 is the smallest ARM core to support the Helium extensions that are already in the M55 and M85 cores which use the ARMv8.1 instruction set architecture. ARM is pitching this as avoiding the need for the Ethos U55 neural processing units NPU.
The optional Helium engine supports a single 32-bit MACs/cycle, two 16-bit MACs/cycle or four 8-bit MACs/cycle. The core also supports custom instructions, an option that competes with the RISC-V extensions.
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“The Cortex-M52 includes Arm Helium technology, providing a significant performance uplift in DSP and ML applications for small, low power embedded devices, making it possible to deploy more compute intensive ML inference algorithms in endpoints without a dedicated NPU,” said Paul Williamson, senior vice president and general manager of the Internet of Things line of business.
“By extending Helium technology into a new class of Cortex-M, ARM is delivering a step change in matrix and DSP compute on microcontrollers for smaller embedded devices. The Cortex-M52 provides a simplified migration path from the Cortex-M33 and Cortex-M4, addressing a wide range of AIoT applications to enable richer UI, voice and vision experiences, such as automotive and industrial control, predictive maintenance, and wearable sensor fusion,” he said.
ARM says the Helium engine boosts performance by 5.6x for ML and up to 2.7x performance for digital signal processing compared to ‘previous Cortex-M generations’. Renesas used the M85 core to jump over the previous generation M7 core.
The Cortex-M52 implements the latest security extensions for Armv8.1-M, including PACBTI and TrustZone to mitigate software threats. The Cortex-M52 will also accelerate the route to PSA Certified Level 2 silicon, enabling the next generation of PSA Certified devices.
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ARMv8.1-M cores support enhanced functional safety (FuSa) features that are crucial in many automotive and industrial control applications. The Cortex-M52 delivers these extended safety packages and features to help chip designers reach FuSa certification faster and more easily, compared to previous generation Cortex-Ms being deployed in these applications.
The single core avoids the need for three separate development tolls for a CPU, a DSP and an NPU, bringing AI within reach on a single toolchain and single proven architecture, says Williamson.
“This ensures a unified development flow for traditional, DSP and ML workloads – while specific integration and optimizations for leading machine learning frameworks will ensure that developers have a seamless experience and get the best performance from any Cortex-M,” he said.
Cortex-M52 is fully software compatible with Cortex-M55 and Cortex-M85, enabling developers to benefit from and leverage the growing software and tools ecosystem around Helium, as well as free software libraries and an extensive knowledge base from our partner ecosystem.
Cortex-M52 will also be available on ARM Virtual Hardware, our cloud-based offering that enables software development in advance of silicon.
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