Imagination IMG RTXM-2200 32-bit RISC-V real-time CPU core is the first member of the company’s Catapult family comprised of four distinct RISC-V families for dynamic microcontrollers, real-time embedded CPUs, high-performance application CPUs, and functionally safe automotive CPUs.
The company says it’s a highly scalable real-time, deterministic, 32-bit embedded CPU, that is feature-rich and flexible in design for mainstream devices, but, excuse the pun, leaves most of the details to your imagination…
The new core will mostly be used as a helper core (aka co-processor) in more complex SoCs for 5G modems, cellular base stations, networking solutions for data transfer, packet management, and storage controllers, but may also find its way into smart meters. In all fairness, we do have some limited technical details with L1 cache sizes up to 128KB, I/D TCM sizes up to 128KB, and PMA regions. The real-time core will also include optional features such as single-point floating-point (F) and BFloat16 for machine learning tasks and a Bit Manipulation(B) extension is implemented to help with code density.
There’s also an optional interrupt module, debug module, breakpoint triggers, and trace, and Imagination also highlights the IP is backed by “over 500 fundamental CPU patents”. On the software side, a full tools package will be provided to designers and developers notably including the Visual Studio-based Catapult Studio IDE for Windows, Ubuntu, CentOS and MacOS that offers full Linux support and is compatible with gem5 simulator software. We are also told the IMG RTXM-2200 core will also benefit from Linux and FreeRTOS SDKs with support for GCC and LLVM compilers, and the GDB debugger.
The video below does not provide much more details about the IMG RTXM-2200 RISC-V core but talks a bit about the future of the Catapult family.
A few more details may be available on the product page and the press release.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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A update on electronicsweekly says
” IMG RTXM-2200 has instruction pre-fetch, branch prediction and also parallel execution for load/store, MAC [multiple/accumulate], instructions involving shift, division and floating point operations.
We are ahead of where we expected to be on benchmarks already, and confident it will be competitive. Typical frequency is 1.8GHz at 7nm.
This is our first core and our focus was on something rock solid, verified and easy to deploy for the customer, complete with software. The cores are scheduled for lead partner access in Q3 of 2022. “