ARM
The ARM processor is the first RISC microprocessor designed by Acorn Computer for low budget markets. Earlier known as Acorn RISC Machine. The ARM processor itself is a 32-bit design, but it is also equipped with a 16-bit instruction set, which generally saves 35% compared to the equivalent 32-bit code, but retains all the advantages of a 32-bit system. 
ARM historical development:
On December 5, 1978, physicist Hermann Hauser and engineer Chris Curry founded the Cambridge Processing Unit in Cambridge, England, to supply electronic equipment to the local market. In 1979, the CPU company was renamed Acorn Computer Corporation.
At first, Acorn plans to use Motorola's 16-bit chip, but found the chip too slow and too expensive. "A machine that costs £500 can't use a CPU with a price of £100!" They turned to Intel for the design information for the 80286 chip, but they were rejected and forced to develop it themselves.
In 1985, Roger Wilson and Steve Furber designed their own first-generation 32-bit, 6M Hz processor, which Roger Wilson and Steve Furber used to make a RISC instruction set, or ARM (Acorn RISC Machine). . This is the origin of the name ARM.
The full name of RISC is "reduced instruction set computer", which supports simple instructions, so the power consumption is small and the price is cheap, which is especially suitable for mobile devices. A typical device that used ARM chips early was Apple's Newton PDA.
In the late 1980s, ARM quickly developed into Acorn's desktop products, forming the foundation of computer education in the UK.
On November 27, 1990, Acorn was officially reorganized into ARM Computer Corporation. Apple invested £1.5 million, chip maker VLSI invested £250,000, and Acorn itself invested £1.5 million in intellectual property and 12 engineers. The company's office is very simple, it is a barn. In the 1990s, ARM's 32-bit embedded RISC (Reduced lnstruction Set Computer) processor expanded to the world, occupying a leading position in low-power, low-cost and high-performance embedded system applications. ARM does not produce chips or sell chips, it only sells chip technology licenses.
MCU
The MCU is essentially a single-chip microcomputer, which refers to a chip-level computer that integrates the CPU, RAM, ROM, timing counter and various I/O interfaces of a computer on one chip.
Manufacturers with good MCUs: Renesas, NXP, Xintang, Microchip, ST, Atmel, Infineon, Texas Instruments, Toshiba, Samsung, Cypress, Analog Devices, Qualcomm, Fujitsu, AMD, AMD Group / Holtek, Zhongying Electronics, Actions, China Resources Micro, Peicheng, Yilong, Hongjing, Songhan, Lingyang, Winbond Electronics, Love Cisco, Ten Speed ​​Technology, Youhuawei, Yingguang, Oubit, Belling, Neusoft Carrier Micro, Junzheng, Zhongwei, Zhaoyi, Weiwei, Xinhai, Lianhua, Sigma, Huichun, Jianrong Technology, Huaxinwei, Shenzhou Longxin, Ziguangwei, Times Minxin, Guoxin Technology, Zhongtianwei and so on.
DSP
DSP (Digital Signal Processing), digital signal processing, referred to as DSP. DSP is the theory and technique for processing signals by numerical calculation. In addition, DSP is also the abbreviation of Digital Signal Processor, which is a digital signal processor. It is a chip integrated with a dedicated computer, only one coin.
FPGA
FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array), which is a field-programmable gate array, is a product further developed on the basis of programmable devices such as PAL, GAL, and CPLD. It emerged as a semi-custom circuit in the field of application specific integrated circuits (ASIC), which not only solves the shortcomings of the custom circuit, but also overcomes the shortcomings of the limited number of original programmable device gates.
Manufacturers with good FPGAs: Altera (acquired by Intel), Xilinx, Actel, Lattice, Atmel, Jingweiyag, QuickLogic, Microsemi, Cypress, TI, Shanghai Fudanwei, Guangdong Gaoyun, Tongfang Guoxin, Xi'an Zhidujing, China Electronics, Chengdu Huawei, Shenzhen Guowei, é¨æ ¼èŠ¯ and so on.
SOC
The definition of SoC is diverse, and it is difficult to give an accurate definition because of its rich content and wide application range. In general, the SoC is called a system-on-chip. It is also called a system-on-a-chip. It means that it is a product. It is an integrated circuit with a dedicated target, which contains the complete system and has the entire contents of the embedded software. At the same time, it is a technology to realize the whole process from determining the system function to the software/hardware division and completing the design.
Comparison of ARM, MCU, DSP, FPGA, SOC
1, using the architecture
ARM: The architecture uses a 32-bit Reduced Instruction Set (RISC) processor architecture. Starting with ARM9, ARM uses the Harvard architecture, which separates instructions and data in separate memory structures, independent program memory and data. The memory greatly improves the processing power of the processor. ARM uses pipeline technology, which reduces the execution time of programs by working in parallel with multiple power components, enabling instructions to flow on multiple pipelines, thereby increasing processor efficiency and throughput. Today ARM7 uses a typical three-stage pipeline, ARM9 uses a five-stage pipeline technology, ARM11 uses a 7-stage pipeline, ARM Cortex-A9 uses a variable pipeline structure (supports 8-11 pipeline). The ARM Cortex-A9 supports up to 4 cores in multi-core support, which is the first time in the ARM family of processors to support multi-core technology. The figure below shows the internal structure of the ARM Cortex-A9.
MCU: Mostly based on the structure of the von Neumann structure, this structure clearly defines the four basic parts necessary for an embedded system: a central processing unit core, program memory (read-only memory or flash memory), Data memory (random memory), one or more timer/counters, and input/output ports for communicating with peripherals and extended resources - all of which are integrated on a single integrated circuit chip. The early MCUs on the instruction set were CISCs and were later replaced by RISCs. In terms of bus bits, the MCU covers 4 bits, 8 bits, 16 bits, and 32 bits, and is widely used.
DSP: Also known as the Digital Signal Processor, it is a microprocessor dedicated to real-time digital signal processing. Structurally it uses the Harvard structure, which also uses pipeline technology. In addition, the DSP can be used as a direct memory access device when used in a host environment. It also supports data from an analog-to-digital converter (ADC), and the final output is data converted from a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) to an analog signal. Support certain parallel processing.
FPGA: FPGA is the abbreviation of English Field Programmable Gate Array. It is a product of further development based on programmable devices such as PAL, GAL, PLD, etc. It is the most integrated in application specific integrated circuit (ASIC). One kind. The FPGA adopts a new concept such as Logic Cell Array (LCA), which includes three parts: Configurable Logic Block (CLB), Input Output Block (IOB) and Interconnect (Interconnect). The user can reconfigure the logic blocks and I/O modules inside the FPGA to implement the user's logic. It also features static reprogrammability and dynamic system refactoring, so that hardware functions can be modified programmatically like software. The difference between FPGA and DSP, ARM and MCU lies in its parallel processing capability. Its powerful parallelism makes the complex operation get a great speed ratio.
SOC: A system chip is an integrated circuit that integrates a computer or other electronic system into a single chip. The system chip can process digital signals, analog signals, mixed signals, and even higher frequency signals. System chips are often used in embedded systems. System chip integration is very large, typically reaching several million gates to tens of millions of gates. The SOC is relatively flexible, and it can integrate the ARM architecture processor with some dedicated peripheral chips to form a system. In fact, existing ARM processors such as Hisi-3507 and hisi3516 are all SOC systems, especially application processors. It integrates many peripheral devices and provides powerful functions for more complex tasks and more complex applications. stand by.
2, power consumption
ARM: It can be said that ARM has achieved great success in the mobile market, the most important reason is its low power consumption. It is well known that electronic products in the mobile market are very sensitive to the power consumption of the processor. In the past, the power consumption of the processor on the PC platform ranged from tens of W to hundreds of W, and such power consumption was placed on the mobile platform. It is unimaginable. ARM consumes only a few hundred mW at a frequency of 1G. The strong low power consumption makes it suitable for mobile electronic products.
DSP: Displayed on a set of data with non-network, the market share of digital signal processing DSP and FPGA are half. One advantage of DSP over FPGA is that its power consumption is relatively low. DSP manufacturers guarantee its market share by increasing the processor's clock speed and trying to reduce power consumption, because FPGAs appear to be in the high-performance digital processing market. More advantage. If you look at the DSP field alone, DSP is the best in terms of power consumption and performance. TI's DSP processor produces lower cost and lower power consumption than other DSP manufacturers. Therefore, TI's DSP chip is more competitive.
MCU: MCUs have the longest time to market. Various vendors have their own architecture and instruction set. If you look at low power consumption, TI's MSP430 MCU is relatively good.
FPGA: FPGA has a relatively high power consumption due to its internal structure, and the chip generates a large amount of heat, which is also a disadvantage of it. But this is also inevitable. In support of high-performance concurrent computing digital circuits, and the internal logic gates mostly use the standard aspect ratio, the resulting digital circuits will inevitably be incapable of being compared with dedicated processors such as ASICs.
SOC: Due to the flexibility of the SOC itself, it integrates multiple devices onto a very small chip to form a system. The SOC system has an advantage in power consumption compared to a system composed of processors such as an MCU. Moreover, the SOC chip can systematically optimize the power consumption of the system by combining the process, circuit design and other factors at the layout level, so that the system is lower in power consumption and smaller in occupation area than the PCB board built by the current peripheral PCB.
3, speed
As ARM's demand for market applications increases, ARM vendors have optimized their frequency to improve its performance. From the beginning of 100Mhz to the amazing 2.3Ghz, ARM clocked forward at an alarming rate.
The fastest frequency of the DSP today can reach 1.2Ghz. Of course, it can't be judged from the main frequency that its performance will be worse than ARM. The DSP has the ability to complete one multiplication and one addition in a single clock cycle. The general ARM does not have such capability. DSP has obvious advantages in the field of computing, so TI combines The advantages of both ARM and DSP produce Da Vinci heterogeneous chips, which of course belongs to the SOC category.
As a low-end application processor, the MCU has a frequency ranging from a few M to several tens of Mhz.
The FPGA clock can be up to a few Ghz or even 10Ghz, of course, it costs a lot. If the FPGA is compared with ARM, DSP, etc., it does not make much sense to compare from the main frequency. After all, the ability of parallel computing is far beyond the serial calculation of the general-purpose processor by several times. If the same filtering algorithm is implemented on an FPGA with a frequency of 100Mhz, it is still faster than an ARM with a frequency of 1Ghz.
4. Application and market
ARM processors are now mainly three series, A series, R series, M series, of which A series is mainly used in consumer electronics applications, and is widely used.
Calculation: netbook, smartbook, input board, e-book reader, thin client
Mobile phones: smart phones, featured phones
Digital Home Appliances: set-top boxes, digital TV, Blu-ray players, game consoles
Car: infotainment, navigation
Enterprise: Laser printers, routers, wireless base stations, VOIP phones and devices
Wireless infrastructure: Web 2.0, wireless base stations, switches, servers
R series processors are mainly used for applications with high real-time requirements, such as aerospace, automotive electronics, etc. It has the advantages of high reliability, high availability, high fault tolerance, and real-time response.
The M-series processors are targeted at lower-end applications and its original goal was to replace existing MCUs on the market.
ARM Cortex-M0
ARM Cortex-M0+
ARM Cortex-M3
ARM Cortex-M4
"8/16 bit" app
"8/16 bit" app
16/32-bit app
"32-bit / DSC" application
Low cost and simplicity
Low cost, best energy efficiency
High performance, universal
Effective digital signal control
DSPs are targeted at applications with high computing power requirements such as video image processing, intelligent robotics, digital wireless, broadband access, digital audio, high-resolution imaging, and digital motor control.
MCUs are the most widely used and are primarily of interest in its cost control, enabling it to be used in many applications where computing power is less demanding. It is believed that in the next few years, the key growth drivers of the MCU market will come from green energy, smart electronic devices, smart grids and upgrades of electronic products such as automotive electronics.
SOC applications are also very extensive, mainly because the architecture of the existing mainstream ARM chips is one of the SOC architectures. The SOC is a relatively broad concept. At this stage, many ARMs and DSPs have begun to adopt SOC methods to implement multiple devices. Add to the processor to form a complex system.
5, development costs
ARM is mainly equipped with LINUX, ANDROID, WINCE and other operating systems. In terms of development difficulty, it is difficult to get started with MCU and DSP. It requires developers to have a deep understanding of the operating system. From the perspective of cost, ARM's single-chip cost Higher than MCU, mainly used in some more complex systems.
MCU entry is the easiest, quick to get started, less difficult to develop, and its low cost, the most widely used in the low-end market.
Getting started with DSP is easier, but the cost of a single chip is higher, mainly for applications that require high computing power. Of course, the DSP can also be equipped with an operating system, and it can be applied to multi-tasking applications with an operating system.
FPGA development is difficult and the development cycle is relatively long, and its single chip cost is high.
Example: SOBEL operator (horizontal edge)
Normally, such an operator needs 9 times of multiplication and 8 additions. This kind of calculation is very easy on FPGA and DSP, but for ARM and MCU, their parallel ability is not strong, when the image to be processed Larger, such as 1280P, they will appear to be more difficult.
However, such an operator is very easy to optimize. For example, the pixel points of the two positions of 1 and -1 can be directly added once, and the same is true for the last line. The pixels corresponding to 2 and -2 in the middle row can also be subjected to one addition and then a shift operation. Complete such an operator operation. The calculation is converted from the original 9 multiplications and 8 additions to the third addition and the first shift (the shift operation can be done in a single cycle clock on most processors).
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