ARM Cortex Designs offer an advantage w.r.t  performance, cost-effectiveness and low-power consumption capabilities. Popularly known as big.Little architecture based designs, ARM Processor designs and ARM Processor applications use Heterogeneous Multi Processing – i.e., architecture that use more than one processor or cores. ARM Cortex Designs and ARM Processor applications offer a processor with multiple cores of different types enabling Heterogeneous Multi Processing, or HMP for short. ARM Cores that have been optimized for different things are combined to create the best processing capabilities.

Heterogeneous Multi Processing architecture encompass a very wide range of scalable performance options offering designers a great deal of choice and the opportunity to use the best-fit core for their application without being forced into a one-size-fits-all solution. Today many of the embedded applications like smart phones, set-top boxes, digital television, wearable headset computers, AV Glasses, digital cameras etc. are built around ARM processor applications and use Heterogeneous Multi Processing. ARM Processor applications refer to Heterogeneous Multi Processing and big.Little Architecture based Designs as a system composed of clusters of application processors that are 100% identical in their instruction set architecture but very different in their micro-architecture.

Heterogeneous Multi Processing

Nowadays, it is common for most of the embedded designs to incorporate more than one ARM  CPU –  multiple cores on a chip or multiple chips on a board or any combination of these to offer heterogeneous multi processing.  Heterogeneous Multi Processing keeps control over real-time properties, while running management/ administrative tasks, offers improved system reliability and security. The ARM Cortex portfolio is split broadly into Cortex-A application processor cores for a performance-intensive systems; Cortex-R high-performance cores for real-time ARM processor applications and Cortex-M–microcontroller cores for a wide range of embedded applications.

In heterogeneous multi processing, threads with high priority or computational intensity can be allocated to the “big” cores while threads with less priority or less computational intensity, such as background tasks, can be performed by the “LITTLE” cores. ARM Cortex Designs use big.Little Architecture based designs or heterogeneous multi processing to gain performance and energy efficiency by adding same/different type of processors, to incorporate specialized processing capabilities to handle particular tasks. 

ARM Processor Applications use heterogeneous multi processing developed by ARM; coupling big.Little Architecture i.e., relatively battery-saving and slower processor cores (LITTLE) with relatively more powerful and power-hungry ones (big). In general, processors with multiple cores of different types enable Heterogeneous Multi Processing.  Thus, heterogeneous multi processing is becoming very commonplace. In heterogeneous multi processing, different processing elements perform different types of functions simultaneously. Mistral’s ARM Cortex Designs are optimized for different ARM Processor Applications or activities and combined to create the best of different worlds.

ARM Processor Applications

Mistral has handled complex ARM Processor Applications and ARM Cortex Designs, implementing SMP, AMP, HMP architecture and also big.Little Architecture based Designs.  Some of the leading SoCs that have implemented the Heterogeneous Multi Processing ARM Cortex cores available in the market include, NVIDIA Tegra4, Samsung Exynos5 Dual, Texas Instruments OMAP5, OMAP4 and AM1x processors, Apple A5, A5X, NXP i.MX6, Renesas Electronics EMMA Mobile/EV2, Xilinx Extensible Processing Platform, Altera SoC FPGA, Samsung Exynos 4210, 4212, 4412, among others.

Mistral offers a range of ARM Processor Applications based on A8, A9, A15, ARM7, ARM9 and other ARM Cortex Designs that deliver unprecedented heterogeneous multi processing capability alongside low power consumption. Our ARM Processor Applications include Product Design, Hardware Design, BSP & Driver development, Firmware & Middleware development, Embedded Applications, Design for Manufacturability, Production Support Services, Product Lifecycle Support and Testing & Validation.

ARM Cortex Designs

Mistral has extensive expertise in ARM Cortex Designs for ARM processor applications with heterogeneous multi processing based on cores like Cortex A8, A9, A15, ARM7, ARM9, ARM Cortex A and big.Little Architecture based Designs providing innovative solutions based on these processors. ARM Cortex processors and SoCs are at the heart of the most powerful and compelling technology products out in the market today, offering heterogeneous multi processing capability alongside low power consumption.

Mistral’s ARM Cortex designs utilize the big.Little Architecture based techniques to deliver unprecedented heterogeneous multi processing capability, along with low power consumption that enable products in a wide range of new and existing ARM markets ranging from mobile computing, high-end digital home, automotive infotainment, in-flight entertainment, servers and wireless infrastructure among others. Mistral has vast experience in ARM Cortex designs and ARM Processor Applications based on the entire range of ARM Cortex architecture ranging from Cortex-A and Cortex-R cores to Cortex-M based MCUs providing single core to multi-core SoC based product designs.

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