Talk:ARM architecture family

Ironically ARM make AMD's x86 insecure?

I've not yet read all the security paper saying: "The AMD Secure Processor, the gatekeeper responsible for the security of AMD processors, contains critical vulnerabilities." Note the AMD Platform Security Processor (I assume the same thing), built into their x86 CPUs, is ARM with TrustZone.

It's not clear that the ARM core and/or TrustZone (never looked to closely at it) is to blame and most reporting doesn't mention ARM but rather the non-open source code it runs. It seems it is to blame, possibly not the core running it. Be aware of that before blaming ARM here on this page; this is just FYI, and for discussion here.

Other links maybe helpful (first one where I discovered this before looking up the others):

https://www.wired.com/story/amd-backdoor-cts-labs-backlash/

https://hothardware.com/news/amd-processors-and-chipsets-ryzenfall-chimera-fallout-security-flaws

https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/security comp.arch (talk)

Update desperately needed

As of right now, this article describes the "now" as it was in 2011, at the latest, with ARM being described as a 32-bit architecture. It then mentions in the lead that it has been announced that 64-bit architecture is coming in the ARMv8-A. The entire ARM architecture#64/32-bit architecture section is a series of announcement after announcement, over a period of years, of successive plans for the ARMv8-A, giving the impression that the company keeps announcing things one after another without ever actually accomplishing any of it. If these things have occurred, then the series of events should describe what has been released; after innovations have been released, it's no longer relevant to tell us that they were announced. And the lead should reflect the current state of the architecture, not what it was seven years ago. Largoplazo (talk) 11:54, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I think there may be confusion over the 'announcements'; because ARM does not manufacturer chips it just designs. Perhaps the announcements are stating a design is complete, hence its part of the job is done. It could be useful to state which manufacturers have created chips based on each of the designs. Jonpatterns (talk) 12:17, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I see your point, I think, but then it would be clearer to indicate that new specs have been "released". And the lead still speaks of the 32-bit architecture as the current state of the technology. Largoplazo (talk) 12:25, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I've updated the lede to make it clear that 64-bit is now support by ARMv8. To my knowledge all the architectures feature 32bit length instructions, including ARMv8 which has 64-bit addressing and arithmetic. The only exception being the Thumb which can use 16-bit length instructions. Jonpatterns (talk) 13:07, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

32-bit is still current. It's a little confusing because there are two main instruction sets, AArch32 and AArch64. When ARMv8 was released it was believed to be the new 64-bit version, keeping compatibility with AArch32 too, but some ARMv8, i.e. the later ARMv8-R are only 32-bit. That is, all the microcontrollers are still only 32-bit (Thumb is however a complication, and yes, with 16-bit instructions). comp.arch (talk) 21:49, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Confusingly, there's:

• the "Arm architecture", which incorporates:
  • the CPU architecture, which has three profiles (A, R, and M, nudge nudge wink wink) and multiple versions (currently 6, 7 and 8);
  • multiple system architectures;
  • multiple security architectures;
  • three instruction sets - A32 (the 32-bit-instruction/32-bit-data-and-addresses ISA, descended from the original ARM ISA), T32 (the variable-length-instruction/32-bit-data-and-addresses ISA, descended from Thumb and Thumb2), and A64 (the 32-bit-instruction/64-bit-data-and-addresses ISA).

The A profile of ARMv8 has, in addition, two "execution states", AArch64 and AArch32. AArch64 includes:

• "The AArch64 Application Level Architecture";
• "The AArch64 Instruction Set", which is A64;
• "The AArch64 System Level Architecture";

and AArch32 includes:

• "The AArch32 Application Level Architecture";
• "The AArch32 Instruction Sets", plural, which are T32 and A32;
• "The AArch32 System Level Architecture".

ARMv7-A and ARMv7-R have two instruction sets, "ARM" and "Thumb"; "Thumb" includes Thumb-2. ARMv6, apparently, is similar, but Thumb-2 is an extension. Guy Harris (talk) 19:31, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

SVE and Fujitsu

My believe is that the main developer of SVE is not just ARM, but also Fujitsu, and SVE is heavily influenced by AVX-512, by extending it further to allow variable vector length, and by Fujitsu's previous HPC processor based on Sparc architecture. I have seen many presentations by Fujitsu on SVE, and their development of their own compiler that is automatically vectorizing code to use with SVE, but I actually do not know if SVE was defined by ARM before that, or Fujitsu cooperated with ARM to develop the instruction set itself. 2A02:168:F609:0:DA58:D7FF:0:F02 (talk) 15:00, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Requested Addition by Arm

Hello, I work for Arm. I would like to request an addition to this page, as it currently makes no mention of the PSA, a crucial part of the Arm architecture.

The suggested addition is:

Platform Security Architecture

Platform Security Architecture (PSA) is an architecture-agnostic security framework intended to help secure Internet of Things (IoT) devices built on system-on-a-chip (SoC) processors. It was introduced by Arm in 2017 at the annual TechCon event and will be first used on Arm Cortex-M processor cores intended for microcontroller use. The PSA includes freely available threat models and security analyses that demonstrate the process for deciding on security features in common IoT products. The PSA also provides freely downloadable application programming interface (API) packages, architectural specifications, open-source firmware implementations, and related test suites.

Thanks! 217.140.106.54 (talk) 15:24, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

References

software operating system

one who took the Public Domain — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.147.33.51 (talk) 05:04, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

ARMv8.3-A and the new FJCVTZS instruction

In Section ARMv8.3-A: "Improved JavaScript data type conversion support (AArch64 and AArch32); e.g. the new FJCVTZS instruction sets a flag when the conversion to 32-bit signed integer is exact, excluding −0, so that the next instruction can branch in this case."

Actually the main feature for JavaScript is that one gets a result modulo 2³² (e.g. useful for the bitwise operations). Even though the source mentions the flag for exactness and its usefulness for JavaScript, I couldn't find in the ECMAScript standard where this flag can be used (even though one can imagine code that may use this flag as an optimization... but probably never in practical code). Vincent Lefèvre (talk) 15:58, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

ARM-based chips and Intel

I doubt that in ARM architecture#Core licence, paragraph "Companies that have developed chips with cores designed by Arm Holdings [...]", the mention of Intel is correct. There is no source and the only ARM-based chips listed in Template:Intel processors are StrongARM and XScale, whose cores have been designed by DEC and Intel respectively (the latter being a redesign or the former). The article Intel will start building ARM-based smartphone chips (The Verge, August 2016) mentions a licensing agreement with ARM to "produce ARM-based chips in Intel factories", but this does not mean chips developed by Intel itself, but rather by other companies. Vincent Lefèvre (talk) 10:11, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

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Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 15:24, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Arm is sentence case?

I've noticed that user User:JBMagination has changed all references to "ARM" in this article to sentence-case "Arm", citing company trademark policy. Doesn't this violate MOS:TM, as most sources still use Arm capitalized as "ARM"? ViperSnake151  Talk  21:45, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

If it is, I will gladly revert it. JBMagination (talk) 21:49, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Please at least revert the names of the chips -- the CPU was never called the 'Arm1' but the ARM1, etc. MatthewWilcox (talk) 12:44, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

@ViperSnake151: Are you thinking of MOS:TMCAPS, which says

For trademarks that are given in mixed or non-capitalization by their owners (such as adidas), follow the formatting and capitalization used by independent reliable sources.

Note, though, that Arm isn't using mixed capitalization (if by that they mean camel case or stuff such as eBay and iPod) or non-capitalization, as they're capitalizing it proper-noun-style.

(This is a bit like Sun Microsystems, where the "Sun" originally came from the Stanford University Network, for which the original SUN workstation was designed, but - as I suspect I've said about a trillion times in USENET posts :-) - they were "Sun Microsystems", not "Stanford University Network Microsystems". The change from "ARM" to "Arm" didn't happen when the company was created, so it's not exactly the same, but it might be a bit similar.) Guy Harris (talk) 22:49, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

• Re: MOS:TMCAPS ("follow the formatting and capitalization used by independent reliable sources"}. Arduino[1][2] and Raspberry Pi[3][4] use ARM. Also see [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] --Guy Macon (talk) 02:18, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure about this change, but I think that ARM should be retained at least in the history section to reflect the way it was written at that time. And what is used in official documents? (For instance, in France, the public institute INRIA has been deacronymized to Inria for the communication, but this has not been changed in legal texts yet.) Vincent Lefèvre (talk) 09:33, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

• Please revert. If there is a stylisation change going forward, then this can be reflected in the article, if/when the usage reaches wide-scale acceptance, ie. in the mainstream press. …The historical naming should probably remain as it has for the last ~35 years, since that is what is being reported/summarised in the majority of the article. TL;DR: ideally ARM1; or as an imperfect compromise, formatted as Arm1 could also work. —Sladen (talk) 13:40, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

• Someone has gone through with a machete changing ARM to Arm - presumably what is referred to in this section. This includes all the historical references. The Acorn RISC Machine architecture was "ARM" not "Arm". There was never an "Arm610 microprocessor". etc. etc. Almost none of the usages of "Arm" in this article make any sense whatsoever. This article is not about the company which has renamed itself, and they cannot rewrite history. You'll note that even Arm themselves use "Arm" for the company and "ARM" for the architecture and the chips - e.g. https://developer.arm.com/documentation/den0024/a/armv8-a-architecture-and-processors/armv8-a - making these Wikipedia changes even more nonsensical --Davidcx (talk) 20:37, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

NotesTracker (talk) 12:15, 20 September 2020 (UTC) Apart from anything else discussed just above, I would suggest altering the phrase "usually written as such today' to "often still written as such"

Missing Operating Systems

I'd like to see a listing for postmarketOS. RichMorin (talk) 19:07, 22 August 2020 (UTC)