Arm expands IoT solutions portfolio
As part of its expanded Total Solutions for IoT roadmap, the company says it is launching the Arm Cortex-M85 processor, the highest-performing and most secure Cortex-M to date, and expanding Arm Virtual Hardware to more platforms, including 3rd-party devices, to make the development process more accessible.
“Developers drive the future of the IoT, but they face an ever-increasing demand for higher performance, increased security and less complex development flows,” says Mohamed Awad, vice president of IoT and Embedded at Arm. “The IoT runs on Arm, and we have a responsibility to create greater opportunities for IoT innovation and scale by continually raising the bar on performance, simplified development, and software reuse for our ecosystem.”
The new Arm Total Solution for Cloud Native Edge Devices is offered as the first designed for Cortex-A and based on Corstone-1000, making the power and potential of platform operating systems like Linux easily available to IoT developers, for the first time. It allows application-class workloads to be developed for devices such as smart wearables, gateways, and high-end smart cameras. Since the Corstone-1000 is Arm SystemReady-IR compliant and features a hardware secure enclave that supports PSA Certified for a higher level of security, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) can immediately enjoy the benefits of Project Cassini.
The new Total Solution for Voice Recognition is based on the Corstone-310 subsystem. It is pre-integrated with the new Cortex-M85 and the Arm Ethos-U55 to create the company’s highest ever performance MCU-based design. The solution is targeted at use-cases ranging from smart speakers and thermostats to drones and factory robots. Developers can also take the Corstone-310 and create a whole range of additional high-performance products by combining it with different reference software.
The Arm Cortex-M85 is the highest performance Cortex-M processor to date and is a natural architectural upgrade path to Armv8-M for applications requiring significantly higher performance. It offers:
- A 30% scalar performance uplift compared to the Cortex-M7
- Arm Helium™ technology to support endpoint ML and DSP workloads
- Enhanced security with Arm TrustZone technology. It also includes Pointer Authentication and Branch Target Identification (PACBTI), a new architectural feature with enhanced software attack threat mitigation to help achieve PSA Certified Level 2, a security baseline for IoT deployments
The company also announced several new virtual devices to broaden the appeal of its Virtual Hardware modeling technology. New additions will include Arm Virtual Hardware for the new Corstone designs as well as seven Cortex-M processors ranging from Cortex-M0 to Cortex-M33. The company says that it is further expanding the library with third-party hardware from partners including NXP, ST Microelectronics and Raspberry Pi.
Also announced was the first release of the Open IoT SDK Framework. This contains the new Open-CMSIS-CDI software standard, a community driven project hosted in Linaro that defines a Common Device Interface (CDI) for the Cortex-M ecosystem. Eight key industry players are already involved including silicon partners, cloud service providers, ODMs and OEMs.
The Arm Cortex-M85, Corstone-310 and Corstone-1000 are available for licensing now and can be accessed immediately as Arm Virtual Hardware in the cloud as part of Arm Total Solutions for IoT.
Arm Virtual Hardware can be accessed at https://avh.arm.com. Third party hardware is available from partners including NXP (iMX8 Arm Cortex Complex), ST Microelectronics (STM32U5 Discovery Kit) and Raspberry Pi (RPi4).
