corecm7h

corecm7h is a fictional 32-bit microcontroller core used in educational materials and hypothetical design discussions. It is described as part of an imagined CoreCM family created to illustrate embedded architecture trade-offs between performance, area, and power.

The core is designed as a compact RISC architecture with a 32-bit register file and a 32-bit address space. It employs a Harvard-style memory layout with separate instruction and data buses and a mixed 16- and 32-bit instruction encoding. The base design aims for a balance of code density and performance, with a seven-stage in-order pipeline that emphasizes low latency for typical embedded workloads. The architecture includes a small set of general-purpose instructions for arithmetic, logic, memory access, and branch operations, plus a handful of system and privileged instructions for interrupt and control management.

Key features include an optional hardware multiplier/divider, configurable optional floating-point unit, and hardware loop support to accelerate tight control loops. The core provides a nested interrupt controller with priority levels, a simple memory protection unit, and a basic DMA engine for peripheral data transfers. Peripherals commonly described in the reference design include general-purpose I/O, timers, a UART, and a basic on-chip RAM and flash memory model.

Variants of corecm7h are described to cover different design goals, such as a low-power variant with aggressive sleep modes, a standard-performance variant with a modest FPU, and a high-performance variant with extended memory and faster bus interfaces. The mentioned toolchain aims for GCC-compatible compilers and a CMSIS-like peripheral library, supporting a reference simulator and open-source reference designs for teaching and exploration.

Because corecm7h is fictional, it serves primarily as a conceptual example rather than a real product. See also ARM Cortex-M7 and general embedded-core design literature for real-world context.