The ARM Cortex-M4 processor, announced by ARM in February, adds DSP instructions and an FPU to the ARM Cortex-M processor series, making it suitable for use in embedded audio, motor control, power management, and other applications where such processing is a central task.

"IAR Systems has been committed to supporting the ARM family of embedded processors with its high quality toolchain, and we welcome the addition of Cortex-M4 processor support to its latest version of the IAR Embedded Workbench," said Shyam Sadasivan, Product Manager, Processor Division, ARM. "This release will further assist the wide market acceptance of the ARM Cortex-M4 processor".

The new signal processing capabilities are well utilised by the IAR C/C++ compiler, part of the IAR Embedded Workbench suite, whose intelligent optimisations schedule the architecture's extended instruction set to add software performance for digital signal control devices. The compiler's built in FPU support guarantees that the maximum performance for floating point operations is reached without the need for time consuming assembly level libraries.

"Our tools for Cortex-M3 processor have been tremendously successful as a result of their combination of performance and ease-of-use. We are currently working in close cooperation with several of the Cortex-M4 processor licensees to ensure chip-specific support is available when their first devices reach the market." said Mats Ullström, Product Director, IAR Systems.

IAR Embedded Workbench incorporates the IAR C/C++ Compiler, assembler, linker, librarian, text editor, project manager, and IAR C-SPY Debugger combined in an integrated development environment (IDE).

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