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back to article ARM Cortex-R8 aka 'Now your hard drive will have a quad-core CPU in it'

Brit processor designer ARM has drawn up a quad-core Cortex-R8 CPU so storage drives can cope with the demands of increasing capacities – and phones can download stuff faster. The Cortex-R family is aimed at real-time applications: code running on the cores must react to interrupts and other events within tight deadlines and …

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  1. Alistair
    Windows

    I have to giggle

    "Snoop control Unit"

    Arm should have a rebranding session.

    "Now called the Edward Snowden"

    4 0 Reply
  2. jzl

    Pies. Pies and fingers everywhere.

    It's just astonishing how much control one small company has over almost every aspect of the modern world.

    People worry about Google, Apple, Facebook and Twitter. But ARM just goes flying right under the radar.

    Not that I'm against ARM - they're a great company and have a good product. But surely this incredible monoculture represents a significant threat to our security and privacy? Isn't it time it was given a bit more time in the spotlight?

    3 6 Reply
    1. Dan Wilkie
      Reply Icon

      Re: Pies. Pies and fingers everywhere.

      The thing is, ARM don't build anything. They invent stuff like crazy, but they're not really a threat to anyone. They remind me of the good old days when people made a career as a Philosopher or an Inventor without worrying about actually making anything.

      They are however, absolute wizards. So don't cross them, or you'll end up turned into a frog.

      11 0 Reply
      1. jzl
        Reply Icon

        Re: Pies. Pies and fingers everywhere.

        ARM don't create physical things, true, but it's a bit off to say they don't build anything. Almost all of the microcode in embedded processors around the world was written by them. Many of the fabs churning out ARM processors are doing so using essentially unmodified ARM reference layouts.

        I'm not saying there's a problem with ARM - I don't believe that. I'm just saying that it surprises me that they get so little public scrutiny.

        Hell, I was a very proud owner of an Archimedes back in the day and wrote my first code on Acorn machines. I'm proud of ARM and what they've achieved.

        4 0 Reply
        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Pies. Pies and fingers everywhere.

          Almost all of the microcode in embedded processors around the world was written by them.

          I know what you mean, but AFAIK there's no microcode in ARM's CPUs. It's one of the reasons why ARMs are more efficient than Intel.

          2 0 Reply
          1. jzl
            Reply Icon

            Re: Pies. Pies and fingers everywhere.

            You're right in a technical sense. ARM chips are not soft coded. But there is logic hard embedded in the design which is indistinguishable from code in the way it is specified.

            0 0 Reply

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