Arm Brings Helium To A Small CPU

Arm’s new Cortex-M52 licensable CPU includes features such as vectors previously available only on larger Cortex-M versions. With a heavy focus on light AI, the new core provides an upgrade for designs that would currently use Cortex-M33-class cores.

Rather than bulking up the older M33, Arm downsized the Cortex-M55 vector implementation, throwing in some new Cortex-M85 features to improve AI performance for small IoT designs with multiple sensors that require local processing. Security also gets an upgrade, and the company is working on a package for functional-safety applications.

Arm’s vector engine, branded Helium and called out in the Armv8.1-M architecture, was first available in the Cortex-M55; after the M85, the M52 is the third CPU with that profile. CPUs of that size typically don’t include single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) units, making this the only core in its class to do so. Even RISC-V, which has been most successful in small control cores, has no equivalently small models with vectors as a standard option.

Available for licensing now, the core gets the benefit of Arm’s tools and software. Embedded CPU code, DSP code, and neural-network models can feed a single toolset, providing a unified environment for testing and debug, streamlining development compared with a solution that mixes technologies and tools.