1. Although ARMv7 products are still frequently seen in the market and many students are learning ARMv7, it has been 15 years since ARMv7 was released, and ARMv8 has been out for 10 years. 2. Despite the popularity of ARM, which occupies various fields in the market and has many programmers closely related to it, there is still no comprehensive Chinese book that discusses the ARMv8 architecture (Note: In 2021, there was a book discussing architecture programming, which is somewhat related). 3. During the ARMv7 era, the entire ARM product line was divided into three branches: Cortex-A for mobile, Cortex-M for embedded, and Cortex-R for real-time applications. In the past 15 years, there have actually been very few R and M core IPs released; most of the focus has been on the A series. 4. In 2021, the Cortex-A series further branched into three categories: the performance-focused super-large core X series, the mobile A series, and the server-oriented Neoverse series.
5. ARM has not only major version numbers like V7/V8/V9, but also minor version numbers like 8.1/8.2/9.0/9.1/9.2. Starting from V8, it is expected to have a major version every 10 years, with almost annual updates for minor versions since 2016.
6. Although ARM has so many version numbers, not every version corresponds to a product. For ARM versions 8.0-8.7, only 8.0 and 8.2 actually have products. 7. Starting from 2021, all new core IPs from ARM are 9.0, and it seems there will be no more core IPs for 8.0.
8. ARMv9 will completely phase out AArch32 (32-bit). Although ARMv9 is forward compatible, EL0 still retains the capability of AArch32. The A710/A510 released in 2021 still supports AArch32, but starting from 2022, new cores will no longer support AArch32. It seems that there will be no more cores supporting AArch32 in the future. 9. Stop constantly talking about big.LITTLE and big.little cores; in fact, mainstream SoCs have long transitioned to the DynamIQ architecture.
10. Finally, here is the “ARMv8/ARMv9 Basic Capability Test” question for you to assess your level; a score of 46 or above is considered passing. Scan the QR code below to start the test:
After answering the questions, a related certificate will be automatically generated, and answers and explanations will be displayed automatically.
