ARM Holdings plc hopes to cement its dominance of the connected universe with a beefy new embedded processor aimed at paving the way for device makers to deliver more advanced features that were too complex for older microcontrollers. The new product fills an important hole in the semiconductor designer’s portfolio.

With three billion units shipped by manufacturing partners in 2013 alone, ARM accounts for the lion’s share of the ultra-compact chips that power the world’s smallest gizmos and other computationally non-intensive devices such as ATMs. More significantly, the British firm commands a leadership position in the mobile space, where an overwhelming majority of phones and tablets incorporate its designs.

The Cortex-M7 addresses the fast-emerging segment at the intersection of those two markets: the connected appliances, smart cars and other next generation gadgets that provide capabilities too resource-intensive for regular microcontrollers to handle yet cannot accommodate the sophisticated processors found in more computationally advanced devices such as desktops. At 400Mhz, the new chip strikes a well-placed balance between performance and footprint that makes it ideal for the category of devices ARM is targeting.

The M7 represents the latest and most powerful iteration in the company’s best-selling Cortex lineup, which ranges from the ultra-small M0 to the M4, the previous crown jewel of the series that comes in at just half the horsepower of its successor. To help customers take advantage of the added performance, the new microcontroller comes with a set of value-added features for optimizing utilization and improving hardware durability.

Included in the package are more configuration options that ARM says enable manufacturers to tweak the trade-off between cost and performance with greater granularity, an AXI interconnect that facilitates 64-bit data transfer and an array of premium functions. Among them are extra caches that can help speed data access, an Embedded Trace Macrocell that makes it possible to monitor instructions sent to the processor and a “safety package” with fault detection features.

The added protection is designed to make it easier for partners to comply with the regulations governing the components found in cards, heavy machinery and medical devices. Those three categories have evolved to represent a particularly massive opportunity over the last few years, and more specifically since General Electric Co. began pushing its vision for an “Industrial Internet” where traditional instruments exploit sensory transmissions to automate everyday tasks.

Completing the M7 value proposition is support for popular third party development tools and backwards compatibility with earlier Cortex models, which means that end-users will be able to upgrade to the new chip without having to rewrite their existing code. ARM says that it has already licensed the design for the microcontroller to Atmel Corp., Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. and France’s STMicroelectronics STM, which are expected to start shipping their M7 variations early next year.

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