ARM Cortex-MXX Differences
Cortex-M series are 32-bit RISC ARM processor cores and are focused on Low-power constraints and are widely used in Low-Power Microcontrollers, IoT and Embedded Systems. The Cortex-M programs run baremetal on one of the many real-time OS which support Cortex-M.
- Cortex-M0 and M0+:
- Designed for low-power applications;
- The M0+ offers improvements on top of the M0:
- More efficient instruction pipeline;
- Lower sleep currents;
- These lack DSP capabilities and hardware floating-point support.
- Cortex-M3:
- Powerful architecture with additional instructions for improved performance;
- Supports an MPU;
- Suitable for complex applications as compared to the M0 series.
- Cortex-M4:
- Built on top of the M3 architecture;
- Added DSP instructions;
- Optional hardware FPU[Floating Point Unit], (Enables Signal processing capabilities).
- Cortex-M4 is particularly applied in audio and sensor applications due to improved computational capability.
- Cortex-M33:
- Features the ARMv8-M architecture,
- Includes TrustZone technology for security
- Supports larger MPUs
- Improved performance metrics than previous generations.
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