The Advantages of NXP ARM based microcontrollers

Copyright © 2016 SOMNIUM® Technologies Limited 1SOMN-MS-0051
Presented at ENOVA Paris 2016
Thu 15th Sept in the NXP IoT Truck Room
EUF-DES-T2250
Smaller, faster, lower-cost!
Benefits of NXP ARM microcontrollers
for embedded developers
Dave Edwards
CEO/CTO SOMNIUM® Technologies
11/09/2016

Abstract
Time to market and development cost are driving
factors in embedded system design
Yet many developers aren't aware of the benefits in using ARM technology,
even in low-end resource constrained designs such as IoT edge nodes.

Contents
 Problems faced by embedded developers
 An overview of ARM microcontroller hardware
 How can using an ARM based device help?
 ARM microcontroller and system architecture overview
 NXP ARM microcontroller overview
 Performance and energy overview
 An overview of ARM software
 An overview of NXP software ecosystem
 Software tools and choices available
 Demonstrations of the features available with NXP microcontrollers.

Problems faced by embedded developers

Time to market is important
 Only 38% of projects are on time
 62% of projects are late!
 Every year its getting worse ...

Choose your microcontroller wisely
 Many chips are similar
 Ecosystem is important
 Not all ecosystems are equal ;-)

Engineering challenges
 Debugging is time consuming
 Better debug tools are needed
 Vendor supplied information is
vital

How can using an ARM based device help?
 Customer benefits from choice, features, availability and quality
 ARM's business model amortizes cost of complex design across many customers
 Semiconductor vendor leverages to build hardware and software ecosystem
 Tools providers leverage compatibility to support a huge range of devices

ARM microcontroller overview

ARM Cortex-M : architecture advantages
 Modern instruction set architecture and microarchitecture
 First V7-M architecture device was Cortex-M3 announced in 2004
 25 years younger than the 8051 architecture!
 Designed to run high level C/C++
 No need for assembly language = lower cost of software development
 ARM Thumb®-2 technology has dense instruction encoding
 Low gate count
 Lower silicon cost
 Small form factor packaged parts
 Powerful
 Significantly higher performance than 8-bit/16-bit microcontrollers
 Energy Efficient
 Fast and efficient interrupt handling
KL03 fits in the dimple of a golf ball!
● 1.9x1.6mm
● 48MHz Cortex M4
● 32KBytes ROM, 2K RAM
● 75 cents in quantities of 100,000

ARM Cortex-M : huge range of choices available
 Processor performance versus features versus cost
 20MHz .. 200MHz+
 Simple microcontroller (M0/M0+) thru DSP capable microcontroller (M3/M4) and beyond
 Single core to multi-core
 Memory size versus requirements versus price versus energy required
 As little as required: 8KBytes ROM/1KBytes RAM
 As much (?) as required: 2MByte ROM/256KByte RAM and beyond
 Wide range of peripherals and interfaces
 Sensors, USB, Ethernet, BLE
 Highly integrated with great software enablement
 Broadly compatibility instructions and source code
 Can scale up (or down) your design as required
 But ... beware of low-level system software differences

Range of processor cores available

Instruction set : clean superset from M0 upwards

Cortex M0 system architecture
Common across all Cortex-M
● M0 supports up to
32 interrupt sources
●
16 (M0), 15 (M0+) cycle
interrupt latency
●
Number of priorities
can vary between devices
Program trace
Doesn't require high end
debug adaptors
All devices have this
Supports simple/low cost
debug adaptors
Typically:
at least 2..4 breakpoints
0..2 watchpoints
(can trigger things within PC range)

Cortex M4 system architecture
Same as Cortex M0 NVIC with:
●
Up to 240 interrupt sources
●
12 cycle interrupt latency
●
Number of priorities
can vary between devices
OPTIONAL
Sophisticated trace
and triggers
BUT .. requires area, pins
and high end debug adaptor
All devices have this
Supports simple/low cost
debug adaptors

NXP ARM-based microcontroller overview

Kinetis family
- sensors and analog integration
KV10 is possibly the
highest performance
Cortex M0+ device available
High performance
Large memory
Sensors and interfaces
Low cost, small memory,
small physical size

LPC family
- optimized for power and cost
LPC8xx :
● low power
● space efficient
● low-pin count
●
great for 8/16 -bit migration
All are Cortex M4 based
● Many single core devices
● Some LPC43xx & LPC5xxx
devices are dual core Cortex
M4 and a Cortex M0+

Measuring energy consumption
 SOMNIUM are members of the EEMBC®
Automotive Subcommittee and use their
industry standard benchmarks.
 We measure energy, measured to the uJ using
the high accuracy EEMBC EnergyMonitor™
 EEMBC CoreMark™ is used to demonstrate the
usable performance of a processor system
running typical algorithms including list
processing (to stress test data accesses), matrix
manipulation (to stress test and mathematical
operations, and state machines (to stress test
complex control flows).

Wide range of performance and energy options
Higher performance
Lower energy
More expensive
Extreme performance
Higher energy
More expensive
Baseline device
●
Good performance
●
Low energy consumption
●
Low cost

ARM software ecosystem overview

CMSIS
 Cortex Microcontroller Software Interface Standard
 Some components are supported by silicon vendors
 Other components are not supported by silicon vendors
 Available from ARM , and from some software tools vendors
 Be aware ...
 Some implementations of some features are NULL
 Implementations vary (features, bugs etc.)
 Are you using the “official” silicon vendor version?
 There is no standards compliance procedure

What's in CMSIS?
Used in evaluation board
OpenOCD debug probes.
Segger & PEMicro are
significantly faster and
more robust
Generally supplied
pre-compiled
No publicly available
test suite
Some parts are “essential”
Some parts are obsoleted by
vendor-specific APIs
Not widely used?

CMSIS files
Originated by ARM
For a given Cortex <X> device (<X> = 0, 3, 4, 7)
core_cm<X>.h global declarations and definitions, function protoypes
core_cm<X>.c global definitions (functions and data)
Originated by silicon vendor
For a given <device> e.g. MK64F12
system_<device>.h device specific definitions (memory mapped registers etc.)
system_<device>.c device specific function definitions
(sometimes vector table is supplied as .s file)
<device>.h device specific definitions (registers etc.)

NXP microcontroller software ecosystem overview

NXP Kinetis: Kinetis SDK v2: CMSIS “and more”
Pre-integrated with industry
standard RTOS
Not like CMSIS:
No concept of separate HAL
and driver layers
Minimal implementation
(use Kinetis-specific
Peripheral drivers instead)

Kinetis Expert: web based SDK creator
● Select components and export source code
● New tool to configure pins etc.
● Check everything is correctly setup

Kinetis Design Studio (KDS)
- free of charge Eclipse IDE + GNU tools
 SOMNIUM Technologies worked with Freescale to produce KDS
 Windows, Linux & MacOSX hosts
 Vanilla code generation and debug

NXP LPC: LPCOpen: CMSIS “and more”
High quality free of charge middleware
Different APIs to Kinetis
equivalents
Flexible configurations and
mostly “compliant” CMSIS-CORE

LPCXpresso
- Eclipse IDE + GNU tools
 Free of charge (256KByte codesize limit)
 Windows, Linux & MacOSX hosts
 Vanilla code generation
 Advanced trace

NXP software enablement summary
 Separate software enablement for Kinetis and LPC devices
Both Kinetis and LPC have their own history
A few compatibility “bumps” along the way
 Kinetis Design Studio and LPCXpresso are similar but different
 Both have vanilla GNU tools, Eclipse IDE platform
 Both are free (for initial versions)
 Different user interface and project formats
 LPCXpresso has more debug features
 3rd party tools are available : SOMNIUM DRT
Tight integration with NXP enablement
 Can import existing Kinetis and LPC projects with no source code changes
 Compatible with historical Kinetis and LPC enablement
 And current/future enablement
 Also supports a wider range of devices

SOMNIUM® DRT -
Professional C/C++ development environment
Save memory
smaller ROM/RAM device, lower cost designs
Save money
faster time to market, optimize BOM costs
Increase performance
more features, “do more with less”
Save energy
higher quality design, reduce lifetime costs

DRT supports the latest C/C++ standards
SOMNIUM
DRT
C standards
C: ISO/IEC 9899:2011 (known as C11) yes
C99 yes
GNU99 yes
C90 yes
C89 yes
C++ standards
C++14 yes
C++11 yes
C++03 yes
C++ exception handling yes
“vanilla”
GNU products
? no
yes ?
yes no
yes yes
yes yes
? no
yes no
yes yes
no (Newlib only) ?

Rigorous approach to correctness & quality
 To our best knowledge no other tools vendors apply this rigour
 Tests are applied on-host (simulated) and on-target (real silicon)
 Tested to destruction ! Flash ROM wears out after ~2 months of our testing
 3 axis testing : size and performance and energy
 DejaGNU tests: GNU compatibility conformance
 SolidSands SuperTest: C/C++ standard conformance and functional correctness
 Over 136,000 individual tests per Cortex-M variant (~4 hours on-host run time)
 NULLSTONE for C: optimization test suite
 Almost 40,000 individual tests (over 48 hours run time if using one board at a time)
 EEMBC® Autobench™ and CoreMark™
 Over 3,000 examples and demos from our semiconductor partners
 SOMNIUM proprietary test suite
 Well placed for future certification (e.g. ISO26262)
 Moving forwards not backwards
 Full regression testing to ensure each release is better than the last

SOMNIUM® DRT :
The professional C/C++ development environment
 Advanced Eclipse based IDE
 Ease of use enhancements
 Best in class debug and trace
 Windows and Linux hosted, MacOSX (coming soon)
 Advanced C/C++ code generation
 Patented resequencing optimizations
 Smaller, faster, more energy efficient code
 No source code changes required
 Technical support

Direct from SOMNIUM's customer engineering team
 Regular product updates and new features

SOMNIUM® DRT
- GNU compatible with added benefits
Free of charge tools use "vanilla" GNU Commercial tools also use "vanilla" GNU
Software enablement is supplied as GNU compatible source code
SOMNIUM® DRT is the only product which offers
GNU compatibility with advanced code generation

DRT recognizes that memory is the bottleneck
SOMNIUM® DRT optimizes for the whole system
It dominates
performance and cost

Benchmark proven:
Smaller, faster, lower energy
EEMBC® CoreMark® built with DRT
Up to 29% energy saving
Up to 38% higher performance
Up to 12% ROM saving
Up to 21% RAM saving

Small memory footprint for C execution
Kinetis Cortex M0+ example (KL46Z)
Hardware initialization before main () and “Empty” C program
int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
while (1) {};
return 0;
}
DRT significantly reduces ROM/ROM footprint
a huge impact on usability of small memory low-cost devices
LPC Cortex M0+ example (LPC824)
ROM RAM
KBytes KBytes
DRT 0.6 n/a n/a 0.1 n/a n/a
LPCX Nano 1.0 72% 424 0.1 -3% -4
LPCX RedLib 2.6 359% 2112 1.1 691% 968
DRT saving
(% and bytes)
DRT saving
(% and bytes)
ROM RAM
KBytes KBytes
DRT 1.5 n/a n/a 0.1 n/a n/a
KDS3 Nano 2.4 59% 908 0.6 314% 440
KDS3 Newlib 3.9 164% 2504 1.5 1009% 1412
CW10.6 Nano 2.5 66% 1004 0.6 317% 444
CW10.6 Newlib 4.5 201% 3064 1.5 1009% 1412
CW10.6 EWL 5.0 238% 3632 4.1 2863% 4008
DRT saving
(% and bytes)
DRT saving
(% and bytes)

Real world middleware demos
Only DRT can fit into a 128KByte device
other tools need the more expensive
256KByte varient
Attach V1 Demo @ Os : doesn't fit with KDS3 Nano
ROM RAM
KBytes DRT saving KBytes DRT saving
DRT 123.5 n/a 13.5 n/a
KDS3 Nano 128.4 4% 13.4 0%
KDS3 Newlib 137.3 11% 15.4 15%
Attach V2 Demo @ -Os : features cut so KDS3 Nano just fits
ROM RAM
KBytes DRT saving KBytes DRT saving
DRT 122.0 n/a 14.9 n/a
KDS3 Nano 127.0 3% 14.9 0%
KDS3 Newlib 144.8 17% 17.0 26%
Kinetis “Attach” demo (MKL26Z128)
Uses Sensor Fusion & EGUI middleware
ROM RAM
KBytes DRTsaving KBytes DRTsaving
“Outofbox”Optimizedforspeed@ O3
DRT 39.7 n/a n/a n/a
KDS3 Nano 47.9 21% 8448 0%
CW10.6 Nano 43.2 9% 3617 -2%
Optimizedforsize @ Os
DRT 35.2 n/a n/a n/a
KDS3 Nano 38.1 8% 2952 0%
Kinetis Sensor Fusion Library (FRDM-KL46)
Uses Sensor Fusion middleware
DRT significantly reduces ROM usage
when optimizing for size
and when optimizing for speed

Unique project importers
 Import and automatic conversion from
 Atmel START (GPDSC format)
 KDS 2
 KDS 3x
 CodeWarrior for MCUs 10.6 (GNU projects)
 CodeWarrior for MCUs (non GNU projects)
 LPCXpresso
 Atollic TrueSTUDIO (STM32CubeMX)
 Coming soon
 SW4STM32
 STM32 CubeMX custom “SOMNIUM DRT” format
 MBED

Leading edge debug features
 Live viewing of memory/variables – no need to breakpoint!

 MTB trace on Cortex M0+ (auto configured, full debug features)

 Fault diagnosis – extract and decode, navigate source code

SOMNIUM® DRT Cortex-M IDE
Wide range of host support
 Windows and Linux, Mac OSX (coming soon)
Wide range of target support
Single User Fixed Perpetual license $2,500 €2,100
 Any one user at a time, on a fixed machine
 One SOMNIUM portal account
Three User Floating Perpetual license $6,000 €5,200
 Any three users at a time, on a any machine
 Three SOMNIUM portal accounts
12 months support and updates included
 Annual renewal for 20% of purchase price

Summary
Choosing the right microcontroller and the right tools is critical
Make the right choice and you can save time, money and get the best results!
 ARM devices
 Competitive cost, features and energy
 Wide range of devices
 Great choice - cost, performance, energy, features
 Strong ecosystem support from NXP
 SOMNIUM DRT - the professional C/C++ IDE
 Offers real advantages to developers
 Save time, money, get best results
 Only solution to provide GNU compatibility and benefits
 High quality technical support

Please get in touch for more information
dave.e@somniumtech.com
Demos running on Booth F120
Free of charge trials of SOMNIUM DRT are available
http://www.somniumtech.com/product-selector

The Advantages of NXP ARM based microcontrollers

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