This section gives an overview of the various ARM architectures and associated features to be aware of when developing code for specific processors.

ARM architectures provide support for the 32-bit ARM and 16-bit Thumb^® instruction set architectures along with architecture extensions to provide support for Tightly Coupled Memory (TCM), memory management, Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD), and NEON™ technologies.

The ARM architecture is constantly improving to meet the increasing demands of leading edge applications developers, while retaining the backwards compatibility necessary to protect investment in software development.

For more information, see the Technical Reference Manual for your processor or the ARM Architecture Reference Manual.

Table 2.1 gives an overview of some key features for the ARM processors.