Simplifying and Accelerating Design and Development
We launched this radical design shift for IoT because we wanted to simplify the design process and streamline product development by providing everything including hardware IP, platform software, ML models, and much more. That would leave developers to focus on what really matters – innovation and differentiation.
At the heart of Total Solutions is Arm Corstone. These are pre-integrated, pre-verified IP subsystems that just work.
In the last three years, more than 150 designs have used Arm Corstone subsystems to accelerate time to market, including nearly 70% of our Cortex-M55 licensees. As we enter the next phase of IoT growth, our partners looked to us for a way to further simplify and accelerate their development cycles.
Using Arm Corstone as the foundation, plus working with the ecosystem to add end-to-end tools support, robust OS enablement, and application-specific reference code, Arm Total Solutions for IoT is a complete solution, ready to implement or build upon. It offers use case-specific solutions, giving you everything you need to simplify your design process and streamline product development.
Our first Total Solution for IoT was based on the Corstone-300 and focused on keyword spotting as a use case. In the Spring of 2022, we added two more:
We’ve worked hard to strike a crucial balance here – providing all of the essential ingredients for a complete solution, but maintaining enough freedom and flexibility to allow developers to get creative too.
So while many will use these solutions as is, we fully expect and encourage partners to find creative new ways to leverage Corstone 310 and Corstone 1000 for additional use cases
As you can see from the roadmap, there will be more to come later this year as we look ahead to address more complex use cases, such as vision and object recognition.
Arm Total Solutions for IoT simplifies the end-to-end developer experience and enables faster development and deployment of IoT applications for everyone, from silicon companies to OEMs to cloud service providers.
To make sure that these technologies are integrated into a successful, secure IoT SoC, Arm Corstone provides everything you need to start your SoC design, helping you build SoCs faster and more securely, with the right architecture choice and verified and validated subsystems. Arm Total Solutions for IoT simplifies the end-to-end developer experience and enables faster development and deployment of IoT applications for everyone, from silicon companies to OEMs to cloud service providers (CSPs).
Corstone Reference Package
Corstone reference packages contain all the relevant system IP to expand and complete the subsystem, building SoCs that can meet complex and diverse requirements while balancing trade-offs between performance and power. Each subsystem is configurable and modifiable, enabling you to focus on differentiation by customizing the system for your needs. Corstone reference packages have been designed to be extensible so you can build the rest of your SoC on top of the subsystem.
Let's start with a closer look at the new Corstone subsystems that form the foundation of our total solutions.
Corstone-310 offers SoC designers a reference design with full modification rights to act as the foundation of secure, high-performance chips based on the Cortex-M85 CPU to meet demanding applications, such as voice recognition. Corstone-310 has been built from the ground up to leverage the advanced capabilities of the CPU, helping designers push MCU performance to new heights. Combining the leading scalar and ML performance of Cortex-M85 with additional ML acceleration from an optional Ethos-U55 NPU, it’s easier than ever to build the highest performing MCUs.
Now let's take a closer look at the new Cortex-M85.
Faced with more demanding compute requirements, Cortex-M microcontroller system developers have a choice: one of squeezing more processing per clock cycle from their current microcontroller or migrating their code base to a higher-performing microprocessor class. The Cortex-M microcontroller offers many benefits, such as determinism, short interrupt latencies, advanced low-power management modes, and integrated hardware-enforced security through TrustZone.
Cortex-M85 sets a new standard in secure, high-performance microcontrollers, and partners such as Renesas, NXP, and STMicroelectronics are really excited about it. The M85 is the ideal choice for high-performance microcontroller-based applications:
Learn more about Arm Corstone here.
Arm Total Solutions for IoT simplify and streamline development for makers of IoT products, accelerating time to money and for the entire IoT ecosystem and value chain - from our silicon partners all the way through to OEMs and service providers. "
Cortex-M85 is the highest performing Cortex-M processor delivering unprecedented performance levels across the board. It is the first Cortex-M to deliver over 6 CoreMarks/MHz and more than 3 DMIPS/MHz. This level of scalar performance is achieved thanks to many innovative features at the microarchitecture level, including optimized dual issue and selective triple issue capability, improved branch prediction, and enhanced memory system.
By integrating Arm Helium Technology, Cortex-M85 delivers multiple folds of DSP and ML processing uplift compared to its predecessors. M85 provides 4x ML performance improvement standalone for endpoint device keyword detection. Where higher workload ML use cases are needed, including voice recognition and automatic speech recognition (ASR), the Corstone-310 Total Solution for Voice Recognition includes the Ethos-U55 microNPU.
The M85 is a major step forward for us in the M-class family – it effectively brings us closer to the performance of the Cortex-A, but with the convenience, determinism, and low power of an MCU and the added bonus of being able to harness the diversity of the extensive Cortex-M software ecosystem.
The IoT market requires not only MCU-based SoCs but also higher-performant processors capable of running major Linux distros “out-of-the-box”. Arm Total Solutions for IoT addresses that space with Corstone-1000. Corstone-1000 integrates Cortex-A and enables easy implementation of heterogeneous systems with Cortex-M processors, like Corstone-310, providing both high performance and extreme power efficiency in a single system. The Cortex-A processor is scalable from Cortex-A32 to Cortex-A53, giving the options of implementing a range of platforms suitable for a range of platforms, for example mobile point of sale applications, gateways, and high-end smart cameras. Corstone-1000 comes with an extensive range of verified configuration options.
Security has been fully integrated from the very definition of Corstone-1000. The Secure Enclave is an essential component. It uses a Cortex-M0+ processor that is included in Corstone-1000. With separate system resources and a separate OS, the Secure Enclave acts as a secure environment in which to store secrets and process sensitive information. Corstone-1000 is already PSA Level 2 ready certified thanks to its secure enclave.
Investing further in Corstone as the heart of our Total Solutions for IoT, with the addition of both Corstone 310 and Corstone 1000, we’re addressing the needs of developers across a wide spectrum of use cases in the IoT and embedded market.