What makes Cortex-M3 more desirable than other ARM cores that are used for MCUs?
There are really two parts to this question: the increased popularity of microcontrollers; and the features of Cortex-M3. First, ARM has made it clear that it sees microcontrollers burgeoning in popularity. Based on that demand, with the introduction of the Cortex family A-series, R-series, and M-series cores, ARM has more clearly segmented its products to satisfy more diverse markets. This increasing influence of the microcontroller market also drove ARM’s acquisition of Keil Software, Inc. to provide MCU users with access to world-class MCU tools at a microcontroller-market competitive price point. Second, Cortex-M3 – in fact the entire Cortex family – has been developed to address specific applications and price/performance points. The Cortex-M3 processor implements the Thumb-2 subset of the ARM v7M instruction set architecture, providing increased performance and reduced code size which is important for 32-bit MCUs. It offers low-cost 32-bit computing for the deeply embedded market
