Arm Cortex-M4 Datasheet
Datasheet
Overview
The Cortex-M4 processor is developed to address digital signal control markets that demand
an efficient, easy-to-use blend of control and signal processing capabilities. The combination
of high-efficiency signal processing functionality with the low-power, low-cost and ease-of-
use benefits of the Cortex-M family of processors satisfies many markets. These industries
include motor control, automotive, power management, embedded audio and industrial
automation markets.
Features
Figure 1: Block diagram Feature Description
of the Cortex-M4 processor
Architecture Armv7E-M
3x AMBA AHB-Lite interface (Harvard bus architecture)
Bus Interface
AMBA ATB interface for CoreSight debug components
ISA Support Thumb/Thumb-2
Pipeline 3-stage + branch speculation
Single-cycle 16/32-bit MAC
Single-cycle dual 16-bit MAC
DSP Extension
8/16-bit SIMD arithmetic
Hardware Divide (2-12 cycles)
Optional single precision floating point unit (FPU)
Floating-Point Unit
IEEE 754 compliant
Optional 8-region MPU with sub regions
Memory Protection
and background region
Integrated Bit Field Processing Instructions
Bit Manipulation
& Bus Level Bit Banding
Interrupts Non-maskable interrupt (NMI) + 1 to 240 physical interrupts
Interrupt Priority Levels 8 to 256 priority levels
Wake-up Interrupt
Optional
Controller
Integrated WFI and WFE Instructions and Sleep On Exit capability
Sleep Modes Sleep & Deep Sleep Signals
Optional Retention Mode with Arm Power Management Kit
Optional JTAG and Serial Wire Debug ports
Debug
Up to 8 Breakpoints and 4 Watchpoints
Optional Instruction Trace (ETM), Data Trace (DWT),
Trace
and Instrumentation Trace (ITM)
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About the Processor
The Cortex-M4 processor is a low-power processor that features low gate count,
low interrupt latency, and low-cost debug. The Cortex-M4 with FPU is a
processor with the same capability as the Cortex-M4 processor and includes
floating-point arithmetic functionality. Both processors are intended for deeply
embedded applications that require fast interrupt response features.
The Cortex-M4 processor includes:
A processor core
A Nested Vectored Interrupt Controller (NVIC) closely integrated with the processor
core to achieve low latency interrupt processing
Multiple high-performance bus interfaces
A low-cost debug solution with the optional ability to:
— Implement breakpoints and code patches
— Implement watchpoints, tracing, and system profiling
— Support printf style debugging
— Bridge to a Trace Port Analyzer (TPA)
An optional Memory Protection Unit (MPU)
A Floating Point Unit (FPU) in the Cortex-M4 with FPU processor
Block Diagram
Figure 2: Cortex-M4 processor components
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Cortex-M4 Components
Processor
The Cortex-M4 processor features a low gate count processor core, with low latency
interrupt processing that has:
A subset of the Thumb instruction set, defined in the Armv7-M architecture
Banked Stack Pointer (SP)
Hardware divide instructions, SDIV and UDIV
Handler and Thread modes
Thumb and Debug states
Support for interruptible-continued instructions LDM, STM, PUSH, and POP
for low interrupt latency
Automatic processor state saving and restoration for low latency Interrupt Service
Routine (ISR) entry and exit
Support for Armv6 big-endian byte-invariant or little-endian accesses
Support for Armv6 unaligned accesses
Floating Point Unit (FPU) in the Cortex-M4 with FPU processor providing:
32-bit instructions for single-precision (C float) data-processing operations
Combined Multiply and Accumulate instructions for increased precision (Fused MAC)
Hardware support for conversion, addition, subtraction, multiplication with optional
accumulate, division, and square root
Hardware support for denormals and all IEEE rounding modes
32 dedicated 32-bit single precision registers, also addressable as 16
double-word registers
Decoupled three-stage pipeline
Nested Vectored Interrupt Controller
Nested Vectored Interrupt Controller (NVIC) closely integrated with the processor core
to achieve low latency interrupt processing. Features include:
External interrupts, configurable from 1 to 240
Bits of priority, configurable from 3 to 8
Dynamic reprioritization of interrupts
Priority grouping
— This enables selection of preempting interrupt levels and non preempting
interrupt levels.
Support for tail-chaining and late arrival of interrupts
— This enables back-to-back interrupt processing without the overhead of state
saving and restoration between interrupts.
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Processor state automatically saved on interrupt entry, and restored on interrupt exit,
with no instruction overhead
Optional Wake-up Interrupt Controller (WIC), providing ultra-low power sleep
mode support
Memory Protection Unit (MPU)
An optional MPU for memory protection, including:
Eight memory regions
Sub Region Disable (SRD), enabling efficient use of memory regions
The ability to enable a background region that implements the default memory
map attributes
Cross Trigger Interface Unit
The optional CTI enables the debug logic and the Embedded Trace Macrocell (ETM)
to interact with each other and with other CoreSight components.
Debug and Trace
Low-cost debug solution that features:
Debug access to all memory and registers in the system, including access to memory
mapped devices, access to internal core registers when the core is halted, and access
to debug control registers even while SYSRESETn is asserted
Serial Wire Debug Port (SW-DP) or Serial Wire JTAG Debug Port (SWJ-DP) debug
access, or both
Optional Flash Patch and Breakpoint (FPB) unit for implementing breakpoints
and code patches
Optional Data Watchpoint and Trace (DWT) unit for implementing watchpoints,
data tracing, and system profiling
Optional Instrumentation Trace Macrocell (ITM) for support of printf style debugging
Optional Trace Port Interface Unit (TPIU) for bridging to a Trace Port Analyzer (TPA),
including Single Wire Output (SWO) mode
Optional ETM for instruction trace
ETM interface
The ETM interface enables simple connection of an ETM to the processor. It provides a
channel for instruction trace to the ETM.
AHB Trace Macrocell interface
The AHB Trace Macrocell (HTM) interface enables a simple connection of the AHB trace
macrocell to the processor. It provides a channel for the data trace to the HTM.
Your implementation must include this interface to use the HTM interface. You must
set TRCENA to 1 in the Debug Exception and Monitor Control Register (DEMCR) before
you enable the HTM to enable the HTM port to supply trace data.
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Bus interfaces
Three Advanced High-performance Bus-Lite (AHB-Lite) interfaces: ICode, DCode,
and System bus interfaces
Private Peripheral Bus (PPB) based on Advanced Peripheral Bus (APB) interface
Bit-band support that includes atomic bit-band write and read operations
Memory access alignment
Write buffer for buffering of write data
Exclusive access transfers for multiprocessor systems
Debug port AHB-AP interface
The processor contains an Advanced High-performance Bus Access Port (AHB-AP) interface
for debug accesses. An external Debug Port (DP) component accesses this interface.
The Cortex-M4 system supports three possible DP implementations:
Serial Wire JTAG Debug Port (SWJ-DP)
— The SWJ-DP is a standard CoreSight debug port that combines JTAG-DP
and Serial Wire Debug Port (SW-DP).
SW-DP
— This provides a two-pin interface to the AHB-AP port.
No DP present
— If no debug functionality is present within the processor, a DP is not required.
The two DP implementations provide different mechanisms for debug access
to the processor. Your implementation must contain only one of these components.
Cortex-M4 Pipeline
Figure 3: Cortex-M4
processor pipeline
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Processor Configuration Options
The Cortex-M4 processor has configurable options that you can set during
the implementation and integration stages to match your functional requirements.
Feature Options
Number of interrupts Specifies number of interrupts (1-240 interrupts)
Between 3 and 8 bits of interrupt priority, between 8 and 256 levels
Levels of interrupt priority
of priority
No MPU
MPU present
MPU present
No FPU
FPU present
FPU present
Bit Banding Specifies whether bit-banding is present
Specifies whether AB-Lite buses maintain control information during
AHB Control
wait stated transfers
Debug Level Specifies the level of debug support (0 to 3)
Trace Level Specifies the level of trace support (0 to 3)
Specifies whether all synchronous state or only architecturally
Reset all registers
required state is reset
JTAG present Enables or disables the JTAG portion of the debug port
Clock Gate Present Specifies whether architectural clock gates are included
Observation Enables observation of internal state of the processor
WIC present Specifies whether a WIC is present
WIC Lines Number of WIC lines (minimum 2)
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Instruction Set
Armv7-M
Armv6-M
Cortex-M0/M0+
Cortex-M3
Cortex-M4
Cortex-M7
Figure 5: Instruction set
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Power, Performance and Area
DMIPS CoreMark/MHz
1.25 3.42
Configuration 90LP 65LP 40LP 28HPM
(7-track, RVt, typical (8 Track , RVt, typical (9 Track, RVt, typical (9-track, HVt, typical
1.2V, 25°C) 1.2V, 25°C) 1.1v, 25°C) 0.9v, 85°C)
Area Power Area Power Area Power Area Power
mm2 mm2 mm2 mm2
µW/MHz µW/MHz µW/MHz µW/MHz
Minimum 0.119 32.82 0.076 26.40 0.028 12.26 0.020 8.47
Configuration*
Feature Rich** 0.304 41.47 0.201 35.54 0.082 15.48 0.053 11.20
Max Freq 40LP 28HPM
(9-track RVt, typical 1.1v, 25C) (12track , LVt, typical 0.9v, 85°C)
Feature Rich Configuration** 223MHz 822MHz
* MPU_PRESENT 0; NUM_IRQ 1; LVL_WIDTH 3; TRACE_LVL 0; DEBUG_LVL 0; JTAG_
PRESENT 0; CLKGATE_PRESENT 1; RESET_ALL_REGS 0; WIC_PRESENT 0; WIC_LINES 3;
BB_PRESENT 0; CONST_AHB_CTRL 0; FPU_PRESENT 0;
** MPU_PRESENT 1; NUM_IRQ 64; LVL_WIDTH 3; TRACE_LVL 2; DEBUG_LVL 3; JTAG_
PRESENT 0; CLKGATE_PRESENT 1; RESET_ALL_REGS 0; WIC_PRESENT 1; WIC_LINES
67; BB_PRESENT 0; CONST_AHB_CTRL 0; FPU_PRESENT 1;
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Additional Technical documents
1. Cortex-M4 Technical Reference Manual - TRM
2. Cortex-M4 Integration and Implementation Manual – available as part of the Bill of Materials
3. Armv7-M Architecture Reference Manual - ARM
4. CoreSight ETM-M4 Technical Reference Manual - ETM
Glossary of Terms
AHB Advanced High-performance Bus
ATB Advanced Trace Bus
C-AHB Code AHB
CTI Cross Trigger Interface
D-AHB Debug AHB
DSP Digital Signal Processing
DWT Data Watchpoint and Trace
ETM Embedded Trace Macrocell
FPU Floating Point Unit
IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
ISR Interrupt Service Routine
ITM Instrumentation Trace Macrocell
JTAG Joint Test Action Group
MAC Multiply and Accumulate
MPU Memory Protection Unit
NMI Non-maskable Interrupt
NVIC Nested Vectored Interrupt Controller
PPB Private Peripheral Bus
S-AHB System AHB
SIMD Single Instruction, Multiple Data
SWO Serial Wire Output
TPA Trace Port Analyzer
TPIU Trace Port Interface Unit
WFE Wait for event
WFI Wait for interrupt
WIC Wake-up Interrupt Controller
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