Introduction

Arm is the dominant processor architecture in mobile and embedded devices. The CPU architectures are developed by the company Arm Ltd. and licensed by various hardware manufacturers for use in processor design. Plenty of ARM-based processor models are available on the market, ranging from special-purpose microcontrollers to generic computing with support for consumer operating systems. The price-performance ratio and broad availability makes ARM processors ideal for use in hobbyist electronics projects.

History

The initial ARM processor architecture was developed in the mid-1980s by the British computer manufacturer Acorn Computers with the goal of creating an auxiliary processor for a business computer product. The acronym ARM stands for Acorn RISC Machine. ARM Ltd. was founded as a joint venture with the U.S. computer manufacturer Apple with the goal of developing an improved architecture that could be used for the main processor of a computer.

Processor Classes

Arm Cortex-M microcontrollers
Arm Cortex-A application processors

Arm GNU Toolchain

Arm provides a version of GNU GCC for translating source code into instructions for Arm processors. This is a widely used reference compiler suite.
Arm GNU Toolchain

Installing with Apt

If your operating system is Ubuntu Linux, you can install the Arm GCC compiler suite with apt:

sudo apt-get install gcc-arm-none-eabi