Green Hills extends support for ARMv8-M architecture

Thousands of successful customers are using Green Hills Software’s products to build and deploy devices for medical, automotive, home and industrial applications based on ARM Cortex-M processors, as well as the Cortex-R and Cortex-A processor families.

“The ability to deliver security to even the smallest embedded devices and improving energy-efficiency is critical for the IoT to reach its full potential,” said Nandan Nayampally, vice president of marketing and strategy, CPU Group, ARM.

“The Cortex-M23 and Cortex-M33 processors make it easier for IoT developers to create secure, energy-efficient connected devices, bringing new levels of secure hardware partitioning and debug capability, as well as additional architecture performance to a wide range of applications. We have worked with Green Hills to deliver these market-leading capabilities for our mutual customers.”

ARM has launched the 32-bit Cortex-M23 and Cortex-M33 as the first processors implementing the new ARMv8-M architecture, which features ARM TrustZone technology and targets very low power and resource-constrained devices, traditionally built using Cortex-M0+, Cortex-M3 and Cortex-M4 processors.

Sweet spot markets include battery powered or energy-harvesting monitors and sensors, automotive chassis systems and ultra-low power wearables. Green Hills Software brings to Cortex-M23 and Cortex-M33 three areas of strength for system and software developers:

• efficient execution performance,
• clearer visibility during debugging,
• secure connectivity and device lifecycle.

Today’s flood of internet-enabled devices introduces an alarming number of security vulnerabilities when designers do not apply best-practices for embedded software security. INTEGRITY Security Services, a Green Hills Software Company, provides embedded security products and services that protect smart connected devices for all industries.

They offer embedded cryptographic toolkits, TrustZone consultation, authenticated boot, key injection, software digital signing, OTA and the management of secure digital assets in complex supply chains.

Embedded applications running on Cortex-M23 and Cortex-M33 depend on efficient performance to achieve product goals where CPU cycles and power are at a premium. For more than 33 years, Green Hills Optimising C/C++ Compilers have enabled developers to reach maximum CPU performance – up to 35% faster compared to competing compilers – with minimal code size.

Proof points are found in the many record scores published and certified by the EEMBC consortium, an industry alliance that develops benchmarks for system designers to select the optimal processor.

In addition, Green Hills compilers are qualified for automotive, industrial and medical safety applications, having received certificates for the highest levels of the safety standards ISO 26262, IEC 61508 and FDA Class III.

Additionally, the µ-velOSity RTOS from Green Hills was designed for the resource-constrained environments addressed by Cortex-M processors and uses the smallest number of CPU clock cycles and memory, requiring only 1.6KB of ROM.

Using µ-velOSity is easy. Complete source code for the RTOS and select middleware is included, the API is simple and the MULTI integrated development environment provides easy-to-use powerful software development tools.

Green Hills Software’s comprehensive MULTI suite of integrated development tools enables developers to bring to market more quickly a higher performing and more reliable product, whether it runs on no-OS, µ-velOSity or other third-party operating systems.

Key feature advantages of the MULTI suite when used with Cortex-M processors include kernel-aware debugging and Time Machine for back-in-time debugging. Enabling higher quality code, MULTI gives developers control and visibility into stack performance and run-time errors, plus an integrated MISRA C adherence tool.

Rounding out its time-saving tools solutions, the Green Hills Probe and SuperTrace Probe speed hardware bring-up through low-level JTAG debugging and trace-powered visibility.
Green Hills products run today on ARMv8-M FPGA platforms from ARM.