OE-9.3 ARM Architecture & Instruction Set
You can explain the ARM design philosophy and data flow model, read the register organization and program status register, and describe the pipeline, exceptions and Cortex series.
ARM is the architecture in your phone, your router and increasingly your laptop, so this unit has the longest professional half-life in the course. The design philosophy section explains the RISC bargain - simple fixed-length instructions, many registers, load/store separation - which buys pipelining and power efficiency. Understand the pipeline before exceptions, because an exception is precisely the event that disrupts it, and that is why the register banking scheme exists.
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ARM design philosophy
The thinking behind the other processor family in this course, which is deliberately different from the one above. The philosophy explains the instruction set rather than the other way round.
NPTEL: Embedded System Design with ARM · CourseARM data flow model
How data moves inside the core. It is the picture to hold while reading the register and instruction items below.
NPTEL: Embedded System Design with ARM · CourseRegister organization
What the core has to work with, including the banking that makes exception handling fast. The banked registers are the feature worth understanding properly.
Program status register
The register that records what happened and what mode the processor is in. Mode is the part that has no counterpart on the smaller device above.
The ARM pipeline
How instructions overlap, which is where the performance comes from. The same idea as in a computer architecture course, on a device you could actually buy.
NPTEL: Embedded System Design with ARM · CourseIntroduction to exceptions
What happens when something interrupts normal flow, including faults. This is where the banked registers and the mode bits earn their place.
The ARM instruction set
The instructions themselves, with the conditional execution that is characteristic of this family. Aim for the shape rather than the whole list.
NPTEL: Embedded System Design with ARM · CourseIntroduction to the ARM Cortex series and its salient features
The modern line, which is what you will actually meet. It closes the topic by connecting the architecture to devices currently on sale.
NPTEL: Embedded System Design with ARM · Course
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