ARM reveals Cortex-R5 and Cortex-R7 cores

ARM launched the Cortex-R5 MPCore and the Cortex-R7 MPCore processors for use in 3G and 4G (LTE not WiMax) mobile baseband, mass storage, automotive and industrial markets. The R5 is the successor to the R4 and boasts an expanded feature set including a high priority Low-Latency Peripheral Port (LLPP) for fast peripheral reads and writes, and an Accelerator Coherency Port (ACP) providing cache coherency for increased data transfer efficiency and more reliable firmware.

ARM is playing up the power of the R7 saying it will beat anything the company has produced thus far: “The Cortex-R7 processor greatly extends the performance levels of the Cortex-R series beyond any existing capabilities through the introduction of new technology, including out-of-order execution, dynamic register renaming combined with improved branch prediction, superscalar execution and faster hardware support for divide, floating point and other functions.” Both processors are available for licensing today and four tier-one licensees in the mass storage, automotive and mobile baseband markets already have designs underway.