Beginners guide to the ARM Cortex-M series processors

There are currently at least 15 microcontroller vendors shipping ARM microcontroller products and at least another ten semiconductor companies shipping ASICs or SoCs containing Cortex-M processors. Considering that the first Cortex-M processor was released only six years ago, this is a considerable success. Today, more and more embedded software developers have started to use Cortex-M processor-based microcontrollers and some universities have started to teach Cortex-M processor programming in their engineering courses.

For beginners in embedded software development, stepping into this world could be daunting; there are many different kinds of ARM processor — the largest processor portfolio in the industry — and there are five processors in the Cortex-M series alone! This article explains what these processors are, some of their features and how to get started with software development with the Cortex-M processor-based MCUs.

If this abstract has piqued your interest, read the full article online in the August issue of Electronic Specifier Design, by clicking here.