CoreLink System IP & Design Tools for AMBA

(View Larger CoreLink System IP & Design Tools for AMBA Image)

CoreLink™ System IP and design tools provide the components and the methodology for designers to build SoCs based on the AMBA^® specifications, mazimizing the efficiency of data movement and storage, delivering the performance needed at the lowest power and cost.

ARM has introduced the new CoreLink 400 series of interconnect, memory controllers, and system controllers for AMBA 3 and AMBA 4 interface specifications. The latest AMBA 4 specifications add five new interface protocols: ACE, ACE-Lite, AXI4, AXI4-Lite and AXI4-Stream, specified by ARM with wide cross-industry consultation.

The latest CoreLink CCI-400 cache coherent interconnect implements to AMBA 4 ACE protocol for full cache coherency between clusters of up to eight CPUs.

Why CoreLink Products?

How to Choose

Customer Successes

AMBA Trademark Guidelines

Resources

CoreLink 400 Product Range

ARM supplies all the major components to move and store data between processors and memory. This includes the recently announced CCI-400 cache coherent interconnect, NIC-400 network interconnect, DMC-400 dynamic memory controller and MMU-400 system memory management unit as well as fully featured cache controllers, DMA controllers, static memory controllers and memory interface PHYs to the highest specifications. AMBA design tools enable the easy configuration, performance exploration and verification of the ARM subsystem.

Tried and Tested IP

High quality ARM CoreLink system IP is widely licensed and implemented by our silicon partners active in many diverse application areas, so you can rest assured that our configurable CoreLink products can be re-used in multiple AMBA-based SoCs over many years.

ARM Expertise in System Design

ARM engineers have designed both the world's No. 1 IP processors (Cortex-A, Cortex-R, Cortex-M, Mali and Classic ARM processors) and the most deployed interconnect architecture, AMBA, and have the expertise and experience to design and support the CoreLink system IP to maximize system performance and minimize power consumption. ARM engineers also contribute to memory interface specifications in the JEDEC and SPMT standards bodies.

Easy Re-use of IP

AMBA is the most widely used on-chip interconnect architecture in SoC designs providing ready re-use of CoreLink products across all your SoC designs:

"We have had many successful years designing SOC solutions relying on AMBA, the industry's de-facto standard for on-chip communication," said Masakazu Yamashina, general manager of the Mobile Systems Division at NEC Electronics.

CoreLink 400 Series Family

CoreLink 400 Series block diagram

Product	Name	Key Features
Cache Coherent Interconnect	CCI-400	2 fully cache coherent and 3 I/O coherent masters x 3 slaves.
Network Interconnect + Quality of Service + Virtual Networks + Thin Links	NIC-400 QoS-400 QVN-400 TLX-400	AMBA 4 protocol-compliant configurable, hierarchical interconnect. QoS regulation to manage traffic. Virtual channels prevent cross-stream and head-of-line blocking. Thin links reduced wiring.
Dynamic Memory Controller	DMC-400	High bus utilization, multi-channel LPDDR2/DDR3 with QoS and virtual channels.
System Memory Management	MMU-400	Stage 2 memory translation extends CPU virtualization to other masters.
Generic Interrrupt Controller	GIC-400	Virtualizes interrupts across multiple CPU clusters.

CoreLink IP Products for AMBA

Explore further by clicking on the area of interest in the SoC block diagram below.

CoreLink Design Tools for AMBA

Quotes on AMBA from some of our customers:

"AMBA AXI methodology brings a new step forward for high bandwidth and low latency design with backward AHB compatibility." - Michel Guellec, IP Design manager, Atmel Rousset
"AMBA AXI technology introduces new capabilities, not just at the protocol level but also to ease physical implementation of the bus in deep sub-micron technologies. These new features will likely expand the adoption of AMBA technology beyond just next-generation processors SoC subsystems to other application specific areas with high-bandwidth and low-latency requirements. LSI Logic is already implementing targeted peripherals and subsystems based on the draft AMBA AXI standard." - Rafi Kedem, senior director of processor cores technology group, LSI Logic.
"Having largely standardized our internal methodology for ARM core-based SoC and macro development around AMBA 2.0 technology we are looking forward to introducing the enhanced capabilities of the AMBA AXI methodology." - Ewald Preiss, manager, Macro Development Group, NEC Electronics (Europe)
"AMBA technology has been very useful in developing our mobile application processors. We believe that the new AMBA AXI methodology would contribute a lot in making the SoC integration more efficient, simpler and easier, definitely with a lot of performance improvement." - Dr. Yun-Tae Lee, vice president of Mobile Solution Project, Samsung Electronics
"System-level interconnect can be a bottleneck that erodes performance. One of the reasons ARM CPUs have been so successful in ASIC development is that ARM had the foresight to develop AMBA technology and have energetically deployed it. AMBA technology helps reduce design time for ARM core-based ASICs and is important for the success of the ARM11™ architecture." - Richard Tobias, vice president, ASIC and Foundry Business Unit, System LSI Group, Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc.
"We believe that the AMBA AXI architecture will enable us to deliver the best solution to our customers." - Tomihiro Ishihara, department manager of SoC design support group, 3rd Custom LSI Division, 1st Business Development Operation Unit, NEC Electronics Corporation

Dear implementers of products and services based on the AMBA^® specifications,

ARM is committed to maintaining and growing a strong quality association with the AMBA brand, for the benefit of the AMBA ecosystem. In order to support this effort, ARM is proposing to clarify the permitted use of its AMBA trademark by licensees of the AMBA specifications, through the introduction of a lightweight trademark license agreement in addition to the existing Trademark Usage Guidelines.

This move allows the community of AMBA developers to leverage the brand whilst still preserving for ARM the exclusive right to issue AMBA specifications. To support this move ARM has also introduced a new brand, CoreLink™, for its own family of system IP products, such as the Network Interconnect (NIC-301), which implement the AMBA specifications in full.

The AMBA trademark license includes guidelines for the use of the trademarks covered by the license and is intended to help licensees of the AMBA specifications to market products that implement one or more of the AMBA specifications and to use the AMBA trademarks in a more consistent manner.

The AMBA trademarks will be available for use by licensees of the AMBA specifications on signature by both parties of the AMBA^® trademark license agreement. The agreement only becomes effective once it has been signed by both parties. ARM reserves the right to refuse to countersign an agreement.

Please print, arrange for signature and send two signed originals of the agreement together with your contact name, address and telephone number to the following address:

Trademarks Department
ARM Ltd
110 Fulbourn Road
Cambridge
CB1 9NJ
United Kingdom

We will countersign and return one of the originals to you. Please note, if we do not receive all the information requested we may not be able to return the countersigned original to you.

Should you have any comments or questions do not hesitate to get in touch by emailing [email protected] or by writing to us at the address above.

Yours faithfully,

Michael Dimelow – Director of Marketing