Green Hills Software, the largest independent vendor of embedded software solutions, has announced that its optimising compilersfor ARM® Architecture were used by Freescale Semiconductor for published Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium®(EEMBC®) CoreMark® scores on the Freescale Kinetis K70 90nm microprocessor based on the ARM Cortex™-M4. The Kinetis K70’s CoreMark/MHz score of 3.08, running at 150 MHz out of flash, represents the highest CoreMark scores ever published for a Freescale Kinetis microcontroller and exceeds all other published results for competing compilers on the same device. The Green Hills compilers have been used for EEMBC published benchmark scores more than all other commercial compilers combined and have attained the highest published scores in every EEMBC benchmark category.
Microprocessor manufacturers publish EEMBC benchmarks in order to showcase the performance of their products on a wide range of real-world applications. These benchmark results reaffirm Green Hills Software’s compiler technology as the preferred choice for embedded developers who wish to both maximise performance as well as minimise memory footprint and power consumption in their designs. In addition, the Green Hills Software compilers are world renowned in their use within safety-critical electronics due to unparalleled code generation robustness.
“The combination of Green Hills Software’s proven, efficient ARM Architecture software development tool solutions and Freescale’s low power, mixed-signal Kinetis MCUs represent the gold standard systems hardware/toolchain platform for ARM-based microcontroller applications in demanding industries, including smart energy, home appliances, factory automation, and portable medical systems,” said Geoff Lees, senior vice president and general manager of Microcontrollers at Freescale.
“Through continuous refinement, Green Hills compilers are able to extract ever-increasing performance out of the ARM Architecture processors, resulting in impressive EEMBC benchmark results and subsequently more highly-optimised application programs,” said Markus Levy, EEMBC president. “The CoreMark scores provide designers with additional objective data to help in selecting the optimal processor for their given application.”
Optimisations
The Green Hills Software tools employ thousands of machine-independent and machine-dependent optimisations, including advanced techniques such as link-time optimisation and code factoring and inter-procedural optimisations. The result is technology that generates the fastest and smallest code for ARM Architecture, as well as many other microprocessors.
Reliability
The Green Hills Software tools are used to build software running the most reliability-critical systems, including aircraft engines, automotive drivetrains, medical devices, industrial controllers, and high availability telecommunications equipment. Companies like Ford, Boeing, and Hewlett-Packard base the reliability of their products on the proven robustness of Green Hills Software technology.
About the Freescale Kinetis ARM Cortex Microcontrollers
The Kinetis portfolio of ARM Cortex MCUs consists of multiple hardware- and software-compatible ARM Cortex-M0+ and ARM Cortex-M4 MCU families with exceptional low-power performance, memory scalability and feature integration. Families range from the entry-level ARM Cortex-M0+ Kinetis L Series to the high-performance, feature-rich ARM Cortex-M4 Kinetis K and include a wide selection of analogue, communication, HMI, connectivity and security features.
About EEMBC
EEMBC, the Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium, was formed in 1997 to develop meaningful performance benchmarks for the hardware and software used in embedded systems. Through the combined efforts of its members, EEMBC benchmarks have become an industry standard for evaluating the capabilities of embedded processors, compilers, and Java implementations according to objective, clearly defined, application-based criteria. Visit EEMBC at www.eembc.org.
Availability
Green Hills Compilers for C, C++, and Ada are available today for Power Architecture, ARM, MIPS, V850, ColdFire, Intel, and Blackfin processor architectures.
About Green Hills Software
Founded in 1982, Green Hills Software is the largest independent vendor of embedded development solutions. In 2008, the Green Hills INTEGRITY-178B RTOS was the first and only operating system to be certified by NIAP (National Information Assurance Partnership comprised of NSA & NIST) to EAL6+, High Robustness, the highest level of security ever achieved for any software product. Our open architecture integrated development solutions address deeply embedded, absolute security and high-reliability applications for the military/avionics, medical, industrial, automotive, networking, consumer and other markets that demand industry-certified solutions. Green Hills Software is headquartered in Santa Barbara, CA, with European headquarters in the United Kingdom. Visit Green Hills Software at www.ghs.com.
