Adding DSP hardware shrinks energy for MCU core

By SemiWiki

October 17, 2016

ARM’s Cortex-M4 processor core represented quite a breakthrough in digital signal controller technology when launched in 2010. Adding a single-cycle multiplier and SIMD instructions enabled basic DSP algorithms while retaining the low power benefits of an MCU. New technology circa 2016 – embedded programmable logic – can extend the Cortex-M4 or other core for the same DSP operations using significantly less energy.

Flex Logix has published a new case study in presentation format exploring performance and power consumption of a stock ARM Cortex-M4 in TSMC 40G versus the same algorithms offloaded into EFLX embedded programmable logic tiles. For the comparison, EFLX figures are from TSMC 40ULP (with comparable dynamic power), and leakage is nullified with power gating. The study also takes out memory access overhead for the Cortex-M4, assuming instructions and data are cached.

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