ARMv6era

ARMv6era is not an official ARM architecture designation. There is no ARM architecture version known as ARMv6era in the ARM Architecture Reference Manual series. In practice, the label may appear in vendor documentation, internal project names, or casual discussions, but it does not denote a formal, independently defined ARMv6 variant.

ARMv6 refers to the sixth generation of ARM architecture, introduced in the early 2000s. It encompasses the ARMv6-A profile for application processors, ARMv6-R for real-time processors, and ARMv6-M for microcontrollers. Cores based on ARMv6 were used in a range of devices, including early smartphones and embedded systems. The generation is associated with a design that supports both 32-bit ARM instructions and 16-bit Thumb instructions, with later products sometimes providing optional hardware features such as floating point units through vendor-specific implementations.

Because ARMv6era is not standardized, it has no official feature set, performance targets, or conformance criteria. If encountered, it should be treated as non-authoritative or a mislabeling. Discussions about ARMv6’s capabilities should be anchored to the official ARMv6 specifications, rather than to informal or ambiguous designations. The subsequent official progression moved to ARMv7-A and ARMv7-R, with ARMv7-M addressing microcontrollers and introducing broader adoption of the more capable Thumb-2 instruction set and other enhancements.

See also: ARM architecture; ARMv6; ARMv7; ARM1176.