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There is a buried lede: the Atom chips have an on-chip ARM core. "This is a dedicated ARM processor, specifically an Arm Cortex M7, that supports real-time fun
by rahimiali 6y ago
There is a buried lede: the Atom chips have an on-chip ARM core.
"This is a dedicated ARM processor, specifically an Arm Cortex M7, that supports real-time functionality, network synchronization, time sensitive networking, and low compute requirement workloads without needing to fire up the bigger cores."
It's interesting to see Intel recognizing this need and this limitation in this way.
- ChuckNorris89 6y agoIntel putting an ARM core on their SoC is like Windows putting a Linux Kernel in their OS ... wait a second.
- nine_k 6y agoAdding a low-power ARM core to an ARM SoC is the norm. See all these "big-little" configurations.
- YetAnotherNick 6y ago> ARM core to an ARM SoC The surprise is something else
- awalton 6y agoThis isn't a big-LITTLE situation. The controller is there to manage board state without waking up the CPU, as extremely commonly found on server- and embedded-class deployments. They've probably even got a document describing how to drop in your favorite IPMI software (be it Dell's DRAC or HP's iLO, etc).
- bgorman 6y agoThis is a great idea. I have a BeagleBone Black that has a SOC with a dual core ARM CPU for running linux and a Texas instruments proprietary real time processor for controlling timing sensitive applications. This Intel solution has the potential to be more useful than the TI one because the ARM core has better compiler support than the custom chip TI made.
- devit 6y agoSeems really weird. How is an OS supposed to support that? Seamlessly transition processes to run in qemu-x86 on the ARM core? Compile some processes as ARM binaries and pin them to the core? Require some sort of data-layout-preserving dual-architecture compilation for all binaries? Seems much more reasonable to add a low-power in-order x86-64 core instead.
- bluGill 6y agoThis is targeted at embedded so anything for that core will only run on that core. Thus the OS needs to know about it because it needs to start that core and stay out of memory that core uses. I have often wised my embedded system had separate CPUs for the embedded control (real time requirements, bad things happen if it crashes), and the user interface (needs to be pretty with icons, but who cares if it crashes)
- jschwartzi 6y agoI’ve worked with systems which did this with two processors talking over SPI. The difficulty with integrating the real-time processor via shared memory is ensuring the real time processor has exclusive memory access to the peripherals it’s using. The control registers might be helpful here provided the bootloader can be trusted to configure them and the rest of the OS kernel doesn’t mess with them at startup. The client PRU is entirely at the mercy of the main OS. So it’s hard to argue that you have perfect separation here like you can when you have separate chips talking over a bus. You may also run out of pins to mux peripherals through as display functions and IO can take a lot of pins.
- ac29 6y agoThe ARM M7 is a microcontroller class processor. Its a high end one, enough to comfortably run Python for example, but its not an application class processor.
- rbanffy 6y agoThese cores, and any modern computer has a quite a few, run their own OSs and software that's usually packaged as blobs the OS loads during driver initialization.
- baybal2 6y agoThe bigger question what's the use of X86 core there, if Atoms are well known to be steamrolled by just any high end ARM core.
- imtringued 6y agoIt's a micro controller.
- baybal2 6y agoI mean if they already went through the pain of integrating ARM ecosystem SoC components, they could've put proper ARM CPU cores too
- dragontamer 6y agoHmmm... Arm Cortex M7 is completely different from Arm Cortex A53. The A53 I see as a proper Intel Atom competitor, the Cortex M7 is something I'd expect to be found (typically) in a very-low end setting, like the controller for a mouse or keyboard. Atom clearly shrinks down to Arm Cortex-A53 levels, but to pretend that Arm Cortex-A53 and M7 are similar is to be disingenuous. ---------- EDIT: Case in point, here's the first Cortex-M7 on Digikey that I found: https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/stmicroelectronics/STM32F730R8T6/497-18103-ND/9453364 https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/stmicroelectronics... There's a HUGE difference between Arm-M (like the M7 in the Intel chip) and ARM-A cores (like the A76 or A53 in your phone).
- pantalaimon 6y agoIntel used to have the Quark chip to compete with these embedded ARM cores.
- dragontamer 6y agoAnd before that, Intel had XScale ARMs. Intel decided to leave the low-margin microcontroller business a long time ago. ARM may have gobbled up the market, but there's an entire graveyard of companies who were unable to make it in that highly competitive market. The Cortex-M world is dominated by peripherals, more so than core performance. A faster or more-accurate 12-bit ADC is what makes your company live or die (or STM's "op-amps on board", which reduce the need of external opamps, a singular opamp + cortex-M3 chip is all you need). Integration is key, not so much performance or even power-efficiency. -------- In any case, I stand by my primary claim: ARM Cortex-M chips do NOT compete against Intel in any capacity. They're a completely different market. Intel doesn't have the technical expertise needed to make ADCs, Timers, or Op-amps like say, ST-Micro or TI. (Lower-power OpAmps, higher-frequency, lower-input current, lower output impedance, compatibility with a wider variety of voltages from 1V to 5V... etc. etc. ).
- chungus_khan 6y agoThey also have the Puma line of DOCSIS cable modem SOCs, but those are kind of infamous right now for some nasty bugs.
- thechao 6y agoIntel has a long, storied, history with ARM, dating back to the late 90s. StrongARM was a great implementation of ARM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM
- paulpan 6y agoI thought for a second you were joking about Intel strongARMing its OEMs against AMD... They also had Merrifield and Moorefield back in 2014 for the smartphone market. Not as good as Snapdragons but not terrible. Makes you wonder what if Intel did not pull the plug.
- imtringued 6y agoIt just means that you don't need an external micro controller. It's more about having a fully integrated solution than some ARM vs x86 thing. Nobody is using x86 based micro controllers anyway.