Methods and Techniques to Minimize ARM Cortex-M Power Consumption
1 Understanding Thumb-2
First, let’s start our discussion of energy-saving technologies from a seemingly non-obvious starting point - the instruction set. All Cortex-M CPUs use the Thumb-2 instruction set, which combines the 32-bit ARM instruction set and the 16-bit Thumb instruction set, providing a flexible solution for raw performance and overall code size. A typical Thumb-2 application on a Cortex-M core can reduce code size by up to 25% compared to the same functional application fully implemented with ARM instructions, while