ARM restructures limbs of instruction set.

Users of the ARM7 architecture are familiar with the distinction between the original ARM (32-bit) instruction set and the Thumb 16-bit instruction set. At the simplest, you use the 32-bit instruction set when you want the highest performance and the most detailed control of program flow in critical loops, and you use the Thumb 16-bit instruction set for increased code density to optimise use of on-chip memory.

As an aside, ARM says that it has continued to improve the space efficiency of the code produced by its compilers at about 5% per year, but the gains available through this route are diminishing. With the changing mix of tasks typically implemented on its processors--more media-processing-intensive applications, for...

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