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Cortex-R4 Processor

The Cortex™-R4 and Cortex-R4F processors are the first deeply embedded processors to be based on the ARMv7-R architecture and are targeted at very high volume deeply embedded applications including hard disk drives, inkjet printers, automotive safety systems and wireless modems.

The Cortex-R4(F) processors provide key savings in cost and power consumption for embedded system developers, offering substantially higher performance than other processors of similar die size such as the ARM1156T2-S™ processor. Furthermore, the Cortex-R4 processor supports substantial synthesis time configurability that enables designers to match the processor precisely to the application requirements.

Why Cortex-R4?

Performance

Specifications

Related Products

Resources

Overview

The Cortex-R4 and Cortex-R4F processors are the industry standard in a wide array of deeply embedded markets with over 17 licenses, hundreds of designs, and hundreds of million devices shipped every year.

These processors deliver outstanding real-time performance and flexibility for demanding and cost-sensitive deeply embedded applications, including

In excess of 450MHz frequency based on TSMC 90G process (worst case conditions)
Optional floating point unit for demanding automotive solutions
Flexible local memory system with cache and exceptional Tightly Coupled Memory (TCM) integration
Binary compatibility with Classic ARM9™ embedded processors

Applications

These processors are designed for demanding real-time solutions and are commonly used in ASIC applications, including:

Product Type	Application
Mobile Handsets	3G Modem baseband applications
Mass Storage	Hard Disk Drive controllers, Solid State Drive controllers
Automotive	Airbag, ABS, Dashboard, GPS, Engine management
Printers	Inkjet and MFP
Consumer	BluRay Players and Portable Media Players
Cameras	Digital Still Camera (DSC) and Digital Video Camera (DVC)
Industrial	Robot Control, High-End MCU

The Cortex-R processor family maintains full binary compatibility with non-MMU based mature Classic ARM7TDMI-S™, ARM946E-S™, ARM968E-S™ and ARM1156T2-S processors ensuring application portability without the need to recompile code. This aspect can be critical in applications where code requires certification, such as automotive systems, or where legacy code bases are no longer available.

High-Performance

High efficiency and high frequency for realtime applications

Extended pipeline for higher frequency
High efficiency design @ 1.6 DMIPS/MHz
Advanced fetch and branch prediction

Real-Time

Delivering deterministic behaviour for high-reliability systems

Deterministic interrupt capability plus non-maskable interrupt (NMI)
Tightly Coupled Memory (TCM) with flexible DMA support
Soft error detection & correction (Parity & ECC)

Flexible

Customizable for feature-rich and cost-sensitive applications

Configurable Memory Protection Unit
Highly configurable cache & TCM plus bus interface
Flexible debug and trace infrastructure
Optional Floating Point Unit (IEE754)

ARM Cortex-R4 Performance Power & Area
	TSMC 90G	TSMC 90G
	Performance Optimized	Area Optimized
Standard Cell Library	ARM SC12	ARM SC7
Performance (Total DMIPS)	760	336
Frequency^*	475 MHz	210 MHz
Power Efficiency^† (DMIPS/mW)	6.15 (excluding cache)	10.0 (excluding cache)
Total power at target frequency^†	123 mW (excluding cache)	33.6 mW (excluding cache)
Silicon Area	1.3 mm²(excluding cache)	0.73 mm² (excluding cache)
FPU Area^**	0.51 mm²	0.28 mm²

Processor area, frequency range and power consumption are heavily dependent on process, libraries and optimizations. The numbers quoted above are illustrative of synthesized cores using general purpose process technologies and ARM standard cell libraries and RAMs.

* Worst case conditions – 90nm process - 0.9V, 125C, slow silicon

† Typical case conditions– 90nm process - 1V, 25C, typical silicon

** If added


Cortex-R4(F)
Architecture	ARMv7-R Cortex
Dhrystone Performance	1.6 DMIPS / MHz
Multicore	No - Single core only
Pipeline	8-Stage
ISA Support	ARM Thumb™-2 / thumb DSP extension Floating Point Unit (Optional)
Memory Management	Memory Protection Unit
Memory System	Main / Cache / TCM
Interrupts	FIQ / IRQ VIC / GIC Port
Bus Architecture	2x AMBA AXI Interfaces
Debug & Trace	CoreSight™ DK-R4(available separately)
Availability	Synthesisable

Cortex-R4(F) Key Features
Thumb-2 Technology	Delivers the peak performance of traditional ARM code while also providing up to a 30% reduction in memory required to store instructions.
Configurable Caches	Cortex-R4(F) caches are configurable supporting independent I- and D-cache sizes between 4K and 64KB. the caches have a pseudo-random cache replacement policy and cache lines can be either write-back or write through depending on the MPU settings. Parity and ECC are supported on both caches.
Configurable TCM	The TCM interface are highly configurable and enable TCMs to range in size up to 8MB. TCMs are typically used for applications that may not respond well to caching, such as highly deterministic or low-latency applications with finite closed-loop control. The Cortex-R4(F) has two interfaces, one for instruction code which typically handles interrupts or exceptions, and one for data requiring intensive processing, such as audio or video processing. The second interface can have two memory ports to increase bandwidth and enable interleaving against incoming DMA-based data streams.
Soft Error Support	To increase the tolerance of the system to soft memory faults the processor can be configured to support caches with either parity generation and error correction / detection, or for ECC code generation, single-bit error correction and two-bit error detection. TCMs can be set similarly however no error correction is available on the parity generation option.
Memory Management Unit	An optional MPU provides memory attributes for embedded control applications. These can configured for the MPU to have eight or twelve regions, each with a minimum resolution of 32 bytes. MPU regions can overlap, and the highest numbered region has the highest priority.
Fast Interrupt Handling	The processor build on traditional ARM instruction handling capabilities with the addition of a VIC (Vectored Interrupt Controller) port, the introduction of low interrupt latency technology and the addition of Non Maskable Fast Interrupts (NMFI). The VIC port enable the processor to be connected to traditional interrupt controllers or the modern GIC (Generic Interrupt Controller) to enable complex priority based interrupt handling. Low interrupt Latency capability reduces the interrupt latency by enabling the abandonment of memory accesses in certain circumstances which is critical in certain control applications.
Floating Point Unit (FPU)	The FPU is an implementation of the ARM Vector Floating Point v3 architecture, with 16 double-precision registers (VFPv3-D16). The unit provides floating-point computation functionality that is compliant with the ANSI/IEEE Std 754-1985, IEEE Standard for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic (IEEE 754). The FPU supports all data-processing instructions and data types in the VFPv3 architecture and fully supports single-precision and double-precision add, subtract, multiply, divide, multiply and accumulate, and square root operations. It also provides conversions between fixed-point and floating-point data formats, and floating-point constant instructions.
AXI Slave Port	The Cortex-R4(F) has an additional configurable slave AXI port that allows other AXI masters in the system to access data and instruction cache RAMs and TCM's . This port can be used with the high-speed dual-port TCM interface to enable fast streaming of data into and out of the processor.

As the centrepiece of many next-generation real-time devices the Cortex-R4 processor is commonly integrated with many other IP blocks.

System IP

System IP components are essential for building complex system on chips and by utilizing System IP components developers can significantly reduce development and validation cycles, saving cost and reducing time to market.

Description	AMBA Bus	System IP Components
Advanced AMBA 3 Interconnect IP	AXI	NIC-301, PL301
DMA Controller	AXI	DMA-330 , PL330
Level 2 Cache Controller	AXI	L2C-310 , PL310
Dynamic Memory Controller	AXI	DMC-340 , PL340
Static Memory Controller	AXI	SMC-35x , PL35x
CoreSight™ Design Kit	ATB	CDK-11

Media Processors
The Mali™ family of products combine to provide the complete graphics stack for all embedded graphics needs, enabling device manufacturers and content developers to deliver the highest quality, cutting edge graphics solutions across the broadest range of consumer devices.
Mali-200 GPU	High performance graphical processor providing advanced 2D and 3D acceleration. Supports OpenGL ES 2.0
Mali-55GPU	The Mali-55 GPU is the world’s smallest OpenGL ES 1.1 compliant GPU using the Mali tile-based rendering architecture to maximize the efficiency of energy usage in displaying graphical images and to minimize the bandwidth demands on the system.

Physical IP
ARM^® Physical IP Platforms deliver process optimized IP, for best-in-class implementations of the Cortex-R4 processor at 65nm and below.
Standard Cell Logic Libraries	Available in a variety of different architectures ARM Standard Cell Libraries support a wide performance range for all types of SoC designs. Designers can choose between different libraries and optimize their designs for speed, power and/or area
Memory Compilers and Registers	A broad array of silicon proven SRAM, Register File and ROM memory compilers for all types of SoC designs ranging from performance critical to cost sensitive and low power applications.
Interface Libraries	A broad portfolio of silicon-proven Interface IP designed to meet varying system architectures and standards. General Purpose I/O, Specialty I/O, High Speed DDR and Serial Interfaces are optimized to deliver high data throughput performance with low pin counts.

Tools Support

All ARM processors are supported by the ARM RealView^® portfolio of development tools, as well as a wide range of third party tools, operating system and EDA vendors. ARM RealView tools are unique in their ability to provide solutions that span the complete development process from concept to final product deployment.

Documentation

CoreSight ETM‑R4 Technical Reference Manual

Cortex-R4 and Cortex-R4F Technical Reference Manual

FAQs

ARM Cortex-R4 Software Development

ARM Cortex-R4 Hardware Design

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