ARM System Developer's Guide: Designing and Optimizing System Software (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Architecture and Design) (Hardcover)

~ Andrew Sloss (Author), Dominic Symes (Author), Chris Wright (Author)
Key Phrases: instruction cycle timings, master page table, cached cores, Instruction Description, Von Neumann, Fast Fourier Transform (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The ARM architecture has enabled a rich set of new applications on increasingly powerful wireless platforms. Media-rich applications such as 3D games, camera and videophones, location-based services and connected portable music and video devices are enabled by next generation CDMA phones executing on the ARM architecture.

Developing embedded software for these platforms requires a knowledge of the underlying architecture, and programming practices which balance power, cost and performance efficient. Sloss provides a comprehensive and practical guide to the development of "hardware aware" software which meets the demanding constraints of these applications. Colored with practical examples, and thorough treatment of topics such as ISRs, code optimization, DSP on ARM and the like, this book is essential for every embedded software engineer and hardware engineer alike."

-J. Scott Runner, Senior Staff Engineer/Manager, Qualcomm CMDA Technologies, Qualcomm Inc.

"This book has a place on the desk of every engineer developing software for the ARM processor; it is a thorough introduction for newcomers, and a useful reference for the ARM expert.

The technical information in this book is aimed squarely at the software developer, you'll find advice on bringing a device up from a bare board, reference information describing the characteristics of all current ARM architectures, and many valuable tips for optimizing code running on ARM cores.

I have been using this book since reviewing the first draft, and can recommend it to anyone who wants the get the best out of their ARM Powered products."

-Peter Maloy, CodeSprite Inc.

"This book provides an excellent introduction to the ARM architecture. It describes important architectural features in detail. It also makes great use of examples to illustrate those features and put them in context."

-Wayne Wolf, Princeton University -- Review

Review

"The ARM architecture has enabled a rich set of new applications on increasingly powerful wireless platforms. Media-rich applications such as 3D games, camera and videophones, location-based services and connected portable music and video devices are enabled by next generation CDMA phones executing on the ARM architecture.

Developing embedded software for these platforms requires a knowledge of the underlying architecture, and programming practices which balance power, cost and performance efficient. Sloss provides a comprehensive and practical guide to the development of "hardware aware" software which meets the demanding constraints of these applications. Highlighted with practical examples, and enhanced by a thorough treatment of topics such as ISRs, code optimization, and DSP on ARM, this book is essential for every embedded software and hardware engineer alike."

-J. Scott Runner, Senior Staff Engineer/Manager, Qualcomm CMDA Technologies, Qualcomm Inc.

"This book has a place on the desk of every engineer developing software for the ARM processor; it is a thorough introduction for newcomers, and a useful reference for the ARM expert.

The technical information in this book is aimed squarely at the software developer, you'll find advice on bringing a device up from a bare board, reference information describing the characteristics of all current ARM architectures, and many valuable tips for optimizing code running on ARM cores.

I have been using this book since reviewing the first draft, and can recommend it to anyone who wants the get the best out of their ARM Powered products."

-Peter Maloy, CodeSprite Inc.

"This book provides an excellent introduction to the ARM architecture. It describes important architectural features in detail. It also makes great use of examples to illustrate those features and put them in context."

-Wayne Wolf, Princeton University

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 689 pages
• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann; 1 edition (April 8, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558608745
• ISBN-13: 978-1558608740
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #169,895 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book for ARM's firmware programmers so far, August 6, 2004

By	lethalgambit (Earth) - See all my reviews

There are many books on ARM's architecture or manual references. So far, this book is the only book which concentrates on the firmware development side. Both assembly language and C are discussed, which is a relief for embedded/firmware engineers like me who like to combine both languages in a project.
The 15 chapters in the book are:
1- ARM Embedded Systems
2- ARM Processor Fundamentals
3- Introduction to the ARM instruction set
4- Introduction to the Thumb instruction set
5- Efficient C Programming
6- Writing and Optimizing ARM assembly code
7- Optimized Primitives
8- Digital Signal Processing
9- Exception and Interrupt Handling
10- Firmware
11- Embedded Operating Systems
12- Cache
13- Memory Protection Units
14- Memory Management Units
15- The Future of the Architecture
The strength of this book lies on the extensive examples on how to program ARM effectively. It is a nice guide for those who want to learn ARM programming style.

36 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars If your company will buy it for you, get it, March 14, 2005

By	JLC "xqusame" (Dallas, TX United States) - See all my reviews

In the ARM tradition of charging for everything, the firmware guide by Sloss is easy to read, and comprehensive up to ARM10/StrongARM XScale/926/940. That said, the book looks like the notes from a firmware lecture delivered by an Arm Apps engineer. The book is strongest in coverage of MMU and cache, but weak on ARM11 (1136 only and as a final chapter) and essentially non-existent in Jazelle coverage. Nice features are the toy RTOS which appears early at reappears with more features (memory protection, and MMU, for example). That this book is so quickly out of date brings the point that MDR bulleted last year, that the ARM family needs birth control but that is a topic for another discussion. Sloss' book has 'non-commercial license' for all the sourcecode. huh? Regarding this book, Freescale for example publishes equivalent information (old ESS manuals) in the 860/8260 training manuals for free, on their website. If your company pays for your books, by all means have them get the sloss book for you it makes a great read on the john, but if you are a student or independent developer, you would be as well served by studying the ARM ARM and applicable ARM source code for U-Boot, Redboot and the L4 microkernel, or even Ed Sutter's book, with the added benefit that you would have a license to use the code in your project.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars extremely useful, April 14, 2006

By	E. Boks "Ewout" (Arnhem, Netherlands) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book covers many aspects of programming the ARM familiy, including a surprisingly thorough discussion on fixed-point DSP computation.

Having come from another architecture, this book really got me going on ARM. It complements the documentation manufacturers usually provide for their ARM chips in that it covers the ARM core much more in-depth.

The book discusses everything from register usage to memory management units. If you want to become an expert programmer in C/Assembly on ARM systems, you must buy this book.

Also included is a nice comparison of the ARM and Gnu assembler directives, which came in handy when I converted an ARM assembly file to the Gnu syntax.