ARM Ltd. announced two new ARM11 family microprocessors at the Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, CA today. The ARM1176JZ-S and ARM1176JZF-S cores, which feature support for ARM's security and power management technologies, are based on the ARMv6 instruction set architecture and are aimed at next-generation consumer devices requiring secure content and low power consumption. The new CPUs also power a new version of ARM's ARM11-based PrimeXsys Platform.

ARM says the new CPUs and PrimeXsys Platform are the first products to implement ARM TrustZone technology, announced earlier this year, which supports the enhanced security requirements of next-generation consumer and wireless devices, and are the first to integrate support for ARM's Intelligent Energy Manager technology which reduces processor energy usage by up to 75 percent.

According to ARM, TrustZone enables protection of code and data across the entire memory architecture, for the first time, in the embedded, portable, and consumer computing market space. The combination of TrustZone with trusted software can protect the operating system, the protocol stack and the network against attack as well as securing users' e-commerce data and downloadable applications, games and media content, the company said.

“For the first time, system designers can address security with the TrustZone technology at the very heart of their chip,” said David Cormie, CPU product manager, ARM.

Other new features include:

• Support for the new ARM Intelligent Energy Manager (IEM) technology which reduces processor energy usage by up to 75 percent providing extended battery life or talk time for mobile users.
• The AMBA 3.0 AXI System Bus Interface for higher memory bandwidth, simplified interconnect design, and reduced time to market.
• ARM Jazelle technology, for efficient embedded Java execution.

• The ARM1176JZF-S core includes a floating-point coprocessor, which makes it particularly appropriate for embedded 3D graphics applications.

The processor cores and TrustZone technology support Windows CE based operation, and also Linux, Palm OS, Symbian OS. Both cores are synthesizable and are expected to achieve 333-550MHz worst-case performance on a range of 0.13-micron processes, ARM said.

ARM plans to release the new cores to ARM Partners in Q2 2004, and the PrimeXsys Platform will be available in Q3 2004.

 
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