ARM Processor Fundamentals

This chapter first provides an overview of the processor core and describes how data moves between its different parts. It describes the programmer's model from a software developer's view of the ARM processor, which will show the functions of the processor core and how different parts interact. It also looks at the core extensions that form an ARM processor. Core extensions speed up and organize main memory as well as extend the instruction set. The chapter then covers the revisions to the ARM core architecture by describing the ARM core naming conventions used to identify them and the chronological changes to the ARM instruction set architecture. The final section introduces the architecture implementations by subdividing them into specific ARM processor core families. A programmer can think of an ARM core as functional units connected by data buses.