ARC Energy PRO Core Family
The ARC Energy PRO, from ARC International (LSE:ARK), is new family of licensable, 32-bit configurable cores. The ARC Energy PRO leverages the company’s ultra low power Energy PRO technology to set new standards for low power consumption by reducing power usage by up to 75%. The Energy PRO family is ideal for the portable and embedded microcontroller markets where lower power consumption is a critical design issue especially in multi-core designs. A new release of ARC’s MQX operating system is included with the new Energy PRO cores, providing additional ability to reduce system-on-chip (SoC) power consumption through monitoring and controlling the SoC’s power by parts other than the core itself. The new ARC Energy PRO cores and the MQX-EP RTOS are now available for licensing.
ARC’s new Energy PRO cores use a holistic approach to power reduction that combines sophisticated hardware and software techniques with a tool chain and libraries. New innovations include architectural clock gating and dynamic voltage and frequency scaling to reduce power usage, which are under the control of a dedicated Power Management Unit. Power control also can be extended to other functional blocks within the SoC to significantly reduce total chip power. By combining the most appropriate energy saving strategies on a per-block and per-subsystem level, SoC designers can define multiple power management modes to ensure that the device uses the minimum possible power while still providing the required performance on a real time basis – even to the extent of shutting the core down when no threads are running.
ARC Energy PRO Core Family
Each member of the new Energy PRO core family is configured to address a specific application area. The cores can take advantage of ARC’s optional advanced modules including ARC XY Advanced DSP, ARC FPX single and dual floating point extensions, and SmaRT real time trace. Energy PRO cores are fully configurable by licensees using ARChitect processor configurator tool. ARChitect produces synthesizable RTL which is compatible with all major industry standard EDA flows.
The ARC Energy PRO 20 is an ultra low power, cacheless CPU/DSP core that is designed for embedded applications including hard real-time controllers, dedicated function blocks and medical devices. Closely coupled, single cycle memories provide the fast computation and deterministic response required in hard real-time applications.
The ARC Energy PRO 30 is an ultra low power CPU/DSP core designed to function as a complete processor solution for applications such as portable and mobile appliances, wireless connectivity management and RTOS-based systems.
MQX-EP RTOS
MQX-EP has been specially designed to complement ARC’s new Energy PRO core family. The new RTOS provides developers with an easy-to-use software interface for system-wide power management, monitoring and profiling, thus enabling Energy PRO’s power saving features to be fully exploited and optimized for deeply embedded, real-time applications. MQX-EP provides an advanced level of software integration with Energy PRO technology, and the resulting power reductions are enabled by the MQX software technology and the MetaWare development tools. The combination of pre-verified hardware, software and development tools equips ARC customers with a complete end-to-end solution.
More info: ARC International
If you are familiar with RSS feeds, you can also sign up for our free blog feed. Our RSS feed is updated in real-time while our newsletter is updated daily.