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M451
May. 4, 2018
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6 FUNCTIONAL DESCRIPTION
ARM
®
Cortex
®
-M4 Core
6.1
The Cortex
®
-M4 processor, a configurable, multistage, 32-bit RISC processor, has three AMBA
AHB-Lite interfaces for best parallel performance and includes an NVIC component. The
processor with optional hardware debug functionality can execute Thumb code and is compatible
with other Cortex-M profile processors. The profile supports two modes -Thread mode and
Handler mode. Handler mode is entered as a result of an exception. An exception return can only
be issued in Handler mode. Thread mode is entered on Reset, and can be entered as a result of
an exception return. The Cortex
®
-M4F is a processor with the same capability as the Cortex
®
-M4
processor and includes floating point arithmetic functionality. The NuMicro
®
M451 family is
embedded with Cortex
®
-M4F processor. Throughout this document, the name Cortex
®
-M4 refers
to both Cortex
®
-M4 and Cortex
®
-M4F processors. The Figure 6.1-1 shows the functional controller
of the processor.
Figure 6.1-1 Cortex
®
-M4 Block Diagram
Cortex
®
-M4 processor features:
A low gate count processor core, with low latency interrupt processing that has:
A subset of the Thumb instruction set, defined in the
ARMv7-M Architecture
Reference Manual
Banked Stack Pointer (SP)