Imperas and OVP Reveal New ARM Processor Models

As technology goes forward, chip developers have to make new processor designs, and Imperas decided this was a good time for its new ARM chip models to see the light of day.

ARM Connected Community member Imperas announced that Open Virtual Platform (OVP) is offering new Cortex-A5 UP and Cortex-A9 MPcore processor cores.

Single-core, dual-core, three-core and even quad-core versions have been invented and are ready to be tested out and used in devices.

Naturally, in addition to that, Imperas has added support for them in its software development tools as well, some example virtual platforms using the cores and this software having already been completed.

For example, one of the chips, the Cortex-A9 MPx2 has already been adopted by the Virtual Platform of the Xilinx Zynq-7000 Extensible Processing Platform (EPP), made by Cadence.

“Zynq was announced in March 2011 as the industry's first Extensible Processing Platform, 'developed to achieve the levels of processing and compute performance required in high-end embedded applications targeting markets such as video surveillance, automotive driver assistance, factory automation, and many others.'

“It promises the flexibility and scalability of an FPGA combined with ASIC-like performance and the ease of an ASSP,” said Cadence's Richard Goering in this blog post.

The Xilinx Zynq-7000 family combines the dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor with a 28nm FPGA fabric.

Meanwhile, Imperas is developing the OVP Fast Processor Model of the Xilinx MicroBlaze soft processor core.

“ARM’s Cortex processor cores are at the heart of leading edge SoCs and embedded systems,” said Simon Davidmann, president and CEO, Imperas and founding director of the OVP initiative.

“And the Imperas OVP Fast Processor Models are at the heart of the virtual platforms of these SoCs and systems.”

What remains is to wait for embedded systems to pick up on this latest development and start milking it for all it's worth.