ARM processor and Its features

 ARM processor and Its features

Most of the Engineering Projects are in need of using advanced processors. In this scenario, ARM processor play a vital role. This article gives an over all features of ARM processor compared with conventional Micro controllers.

The LPC2148 microcontrollers are based on a 32/16 bit ARM7TDMI-S CPU with real-time emulation and embedded trace support, that combines the microcontroller with embedded high speed flash memory ranging from 32 kB to 512 kB. A 128-bit wide memory interface and unique accelerator architecture enable 32-bit code execution at the maximum clock rate. 

For critical code size applications, the alternative 16-bit Thumb mode reduces code by more than 30 % with minimal performance penalty. Due to their tiny size and low power consumption, LPC2148 are ideal for applications where miniaturization is a key requirement, such as access control and point-of-sale. A blend of serial communications interfaces ranging from a USB 2.0 Full Speed device, multiple UARTS, SPI, SSP to I2Cs and on-chip SRAM of 8 kb up to 40 kb, make these devices very well suited for communication gateways and protocol converters, soft modems, voice recognition and low end imaging, providing both large buffer size and high processing power. 

Various 32-bit timers, single or dual 10-bit ADC(s), 10-bit DAC, PWM channels and 45 fast GPIO lines with up to nine edge or level sensitive external interrupt pins make these microcontrollers particularly suitable for industrial control and medical systems.

FEATURES

• ARM7TDMI-S microcontroller is a 16/32-bit microcontroller.

• 8 to 40 kb of on-chip static RAM and 32 to 512 kb of on-chip flash program memory.

128 bit wide interface/accelerator enables high speed 60 MHz operation.

• In-System/In-Application Programming (ISP/IAP) via on-chip boot-loader software.

Single flash sector or full chip erase in 400 ms and programming of 256 bytes in 1 ms.

• One or two (LPC2141/2 vs. LPC2144/6/8) 10-bit A/D converters provide a total of 6/14

analog inputs, with conversion times as low as 2.44 μs per channel.

• Single 10-bit D/A converter provides variable analog output.

• Two 32-bit timers/external event counters (with four capture and four compare

channels each), PWM unit (six outputs) and watchdog.

• Low power real-time clock with independent power and dedicated 32 kHz clock input.

• Multiple serial interfaces including two UARTs (16C550), two Fast I2C-bus (400 kbit/s), SPI and SSP with buffering and variable data length capabilities.

• Vectored interrupt controller with configurable priorities and vector addresses.

• Up to 45 of 5 V tolerant fast general purpose I/O pins.

• Up to nine edge or level sensitive external interrupt pins available.

• 60 MHz maximum CPU clock available from programmable on-chip PLL with settling time of 100 μs.

• On-chip integrated oscillator operates with an external crystal in range from 1 MHz to 30 MHz and with an external oscillator up to 50 MHz.

• Power saving modes include Idle and Power-down.

• Individual enable/disable of peripheral functions as well as peripheral clock scaling for additional power optimization.

• Processor wake-up from Power-down mode via external interrupt, USB, Brown-Out Detect (BOD) or Real-Time Clock (RTC).

• Single power supply chip with Power-On Reset (POR) and BOD circuits:

– CPU operating voltage range of 3.0 V to 3.6 V (3.3 V ± 10 %) with 5 V tolerant I/O pads.