ARM (Cambridge, England) says the R4F processor offers floating point support for faster processing of 32-bit designs, and enables designers to meet stringent error-free automotive safety standards while maintaining the flexibility of their system-on-chip (SoC) designs.

The Cortex-R4 was announced in May this year as an embedded processor range targeted at numerous applications.

Features of the R4F include support for Error-Correcting Code (ECC) memory, the extension of error detection into the interconnect and a synthesis-optional Floating-Point Unit (FPU), and the company stresses the processor is processor is fully supported by a broad range of ARM technologies including RealView development tools, ARM Artisan Physical IP and ARM PrimeCell peripheral IP.

Chris Webber, vice president, Automotive Practice, Strategy Analytics, said the release of the processor is extremely timely as designers of next-generation automotive control systems look for highly robust floating-point processor solutions that are needed for the innately intelligent backbone which will be part of even the most affordable car.

A recent study from the market research group suggested that automotive semiconductor revenues will grow from 2005 to 2010 at 8.2 percent CAGR, more than double the production growth predicted in the light vehicle market, due to electronic system penetration and increasingly sophisticated control functions,

The Cortex-R4F processor includes configurability during synthesis to optimize the processor for different applications through a high-resolution memory protection unit, caches, tightly-coupled memory, DMA and debug facilities. This configurability is provided without compromising the underlying ARM instruction set compatibility, maximizing the reuse of existing software investments by application developers and third parties.

It also brings a strong focus on safety with high resolution memory protection facilities to allow tight control over independent software tasks This is critical to applications based on the OSEK standard for an open-ended architecture, the JasPar Automotive software platform architecture, and the AutoSAR runtime environment.

ARM is a member of AutoSAR which has wide industry support with members such as BMW, Bosch, Continental, DaimlerChrysler, Ford, GM, Siemens and VW. ARM is also a member of JasPar, whose board members include Toyota, Nissan and Honda.

ARM says the Cortex-R4F allows its partners to meet error-free automotive safety standards through seamless support for error detection from the processor, through the interconnect and into peripherals, providing true system-wide protection.

The processors embedded ECC memory also helps to reduce the possible causes of system failure to increase network resiliency. The part features an advanced microarchitecture with dual instruction issue capability to deliver more than 800 Dhrystone MIPS in a performance optimized 90nm implementation, based upon an ARM Artisan Advantage library.

The company says the processor provides key savings in cost and power consumption for system developers, occupying less than 1mm sq and consuming less than 0.27mW/MHz in an area optimized 90nm implementation.