Simulate Cortex-A15 now, ready to run later

wwebb@opensystemsmedia.com — October 6, 2010

I’m big on the ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore processor, as you can probably tell. But I’m sure a lot of you are wondering how it can help designers today, considering that it’s not going to be here for awhile. The challenge in the embedded industry is to pick the right technology...

I’m big on the ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore processor, as you can probably tell. But I’m sure a lot of you are wondering how it can help designers today, considering that it’s not going to be here for awhile. The challenge in the embedded industry is to pick the right technology and tools to be ready when the time comes, which sometimes is a year or two away.

Long story short, the Cortex-A15 is fully simulated now, and both Open Kernel Labs (OKL) and VirtualLogix (recently acquired by Red Bend Software) were among the first to announce immediate support for the simulator. OKL’s OKL4 Microvisor and Red Bend’s VLX mobile virtualization software are supporting Cortex-A15 processor capabilities, including hardware-assisted virtualization[], 40-bit addressing, and the latest ARMv7-A instruction set.