Chapter 1: ARM Embedded Systems

Question 1

What is ARM?

Answer 1

A processor with a whole family of designs sharing simular designs a common instruction set.

Question 2

What is thumb2 instruction set?

Answer 2

16 bit long instruction.

Question 3

How many version of ARM?

Answer 3

6; ARMv1 through ARMv6

Question 4

Is ARM a pure RISC Architecture?

Answer 4

No, because of its primary applications, that’s embedded system.

Question 5

What does RISC emphasize?

Answer 5

RISC emphasizes on complier complex ( relies on complexity of software).

Question 6

What does CISC emphasize?

Answer 6

CISC emphasizes on hardware complexity (relies on complexity of the hardware rather than complier).

Question 7

What are the four major design rules for RISC philosophy?

Answer 7

Instructions, pipelining, register, load/store architecture.

Question 8

Why is instruction important for RISC design?

Answer 8

RISC processors have a reduced number of instruction classes, and complier will break down complicated operations like division by combining simple instructions.

Question 9

What is pipeling?

Answer 9

Moves multiple operations through hardware units that each do a piece of an operation, akin to water flowing through a pipeline.

processing instructions broken down to smaller units, and allows the process to flow orderly.

Question 10

What is a register?

Answer 10

Memory storage that contains data/address.

Question 11

What is load/store architecture?

Answer 11

Memory access: load and store registers.

ALU operations: occurs between registers.

Question 12

What are the four components for an Embedded System Hardware?

Answer 12

Processor, Controllers, Peripherals, and Bus.

Question 13

What can a processor do for the hardware?

Answer 13

A processor execute instructions.

Question 14

What are controllers and the types for the hardware?

Answer 14

controllers are memory and interrupt controllers.

Question 15

The peripheral component for an embedded system hardware does _____?

Answer 15

Interactions for input and output externals.

Question 16

What is Bus?

Answer 16

Bus communicates between different parts of devices.

Question 17

What is the role of memory?

Answer 17

To store data and execute instructions and data.

Question 18

What kind of decision metrics on memory characteritics? (perferred)

Answer 18

For people/companies, memory depends of price, performance and power consumption.

Question 19

What is the memory Hierarchy?

Answer 19

cache, main memory, and secondary.

We use a layered triangle icon to represent the memory hierarchy. The shape indicates speed, cost, and size: the closer to the top, the faster and more expensive per bit the memory; the wider the base of the layer, the bigger the memory.

Question 20

What software components are needed to control an embedded device?

Answer 20

Initialization code (boot loader), OS, device drivers, and applications.

Question 21

What is initialization code?

Answer 21

Takes the processor from reset state to another state (e.g. configuring memory controller, caches, initializing some devices, and debug monitors).

Question 22

What are the phases of initialization code?

Answer 22

Initial hardware configuration(satisfies requirements of boot image), diagnostics, and booting(loading image).

Question 23

What is the purpose of an OS?

Answer 23

To organize the system resources like peripherals, memory, and processing times.