ARM Cortex-A9 Single Core Processor

The ARM Cortex-A9 processor provides unprecedented levels of performance and power efficiency making it an ideal solution for any design requiring high performance in a low-power, cost sensitive, single processor-based device.  Using a convenient synthesizable flow and IP deliverables, the Cortex-A9 processor provides an ideal upgrade path for existing ARM11™ processor-class designs that require higher performance and increased levels of power efficiency within a similar silicon cost and power budget while maintaining a compatible software environment.

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Both the Cortex-A9 and Cortex-A9 MPCore processors provide a scalable solution across a wide range of market applications from mobile handsets through to high-performance consumer and enterprise products by sharing the common requirements of:

• Increased power efficiency with higher performance for lower power consumption
• Increased peak performance for most demanding applications
• Ability to share software and tool investments across multiple devices
  
  

For 2000 DMIPS of performance when designed in a TSMC 65 nanometer (nm) generic process the core logic costs less than 1.5 mm2 of silicon. In addition, the Cortex-A9 processors are fully application compatible and can further enhance application specific performance by utilizing either the Cortex-A9 NEON™ Media Processing Engine or the Cortex-A9 Floating-Point Unit to further extend the scope of solutions utilizing this processor.

COMPLETE SYSTEM SOLUTION
Both ARM Cortex-A9 processors include ARM’s application specific architecture extensions, including DSP and SIMD extensions, Jazelle technology, TrustZone technology and Intelligent Energy Manager (IEM™) technology.  In addition, ARM has developed a full range of supporting technology around the new processor to reduce design time and accelerate time-to-market. This complete system solution comprises fabric IP, system design, development and debug tools, and ARM Advantage^TM standard cell libraries and memories.

• Floating-Point Unit (FPU): The Cortex-A9 FPU provides high-performance single and double precision floating-point instructions.
• Media Processing: The Cortex-A9 NEON Media Processing Engine (MPE) offers the performance and functionality of the Cortex-A9 FPU plus the ARM NEON Advanced SIMD instruction set first introduced with the Cortex-A8 processor for accelerated media and signal processing functions.
• Physical IP: Providing a wide range of products including standard cell libraries and memories required for low-power and high-performance implementations on a Cortex-A9 processor. The standard cells include power management kits that enable dynamic and leakage power saving techniques such as clock gating, multi-voltage islands and power gating. The memory compilers are also offered with advanced power-saving features. The Physical IP products, which are immediately available for download at access.arm.com, can be used for both single and multicore implementations.
• Fabric IP: The Cortex-A9 processor is supported by a comprehensive set of PrimeCell® fabric IP components including the PL341 DDR2 dynamic memory controller, the PL351 static memory controller, plus the PL301 AXI configurable interconnect. In addition, the PL310 L2 Cache Controller has been developed to provide an optimized L2 cache controller that can match the performance and throughput capability of the Cortex-A9 processors in high frequency designs. The AMBA® Designer tool enables SoC developers to configure and stitch complex AXI interconnect sub-systems and export RTL to standard EDA flows.
• System Design: The RealView System Generator  tool offers ultra-fast modelling capability for deployment of Cortex-A9 processor-based virtual platforms running native ARM code to large communities of software developers. Cycle based and programmers’ view models of the Cortex-A9 processor, for use in RealView tools, will be available in 2Q 2008.
• Debug: The Cortex-A9 processor uses ARM CoreSight technology to speed complex debug and reduce time-to-market. The processor includes Program Trace Macrocell technology to enable program-flow trace capabilities for full visibility into the processor’s instruction flow, and implements the ARMv7 architecture-compliant debug interface to enable tools standardization and higher debug performance. The available CoreSight design kit for the Cortex-A9 processor extends the debug and trace capability to cover the entire system-on-chip including multiple ARM processors, DSPs, and intelligent peripherals.
• Software Development: The ARM RealView Development Suite  includes advanced code generation tools which will implement Cortex-A9 processor-specific enhancements to deliver exceptional performance and unmatched code density. The tools also support vectorizing compilation for the NEON media and signal processing extensions, enabling developers to achieve product and project cost reductions through the elimination of separate DSPs. Cortex-A9 MPCore multicore processor debug including advanced cross triggering will be supported by the RealView ICE and Trace products. The Cortex-A9 processor will also be supported by a range of hardware development boards supporting system prototyping in FPGA and software development.
  
  
  

• Cortex-A9 Processor White Paper (590KB PDF)