Amman- 19 February, 2017
With the increased demand for smart connected applications that are low in power and high in performance, embedded system processor architectures form one of the most crucial parts in a system. The ARM architecture is one of the embedded architectures that emerged in recent times satisfying much of the trending demands for embedded systems. ARM Holdings, a British Company headquartered in Cambridge, UK, is the company that designs processor architectures and licenses them to manufacturers. The ARM architecture, as a result, is currently considered one of the most prevalent architectures for embedded devices.
Nowadays, processing power for many applications including smart phones, wearable devices, and automotive devices among others adopt some flavor of the ARM architecture. As of 2014, ARM had shipped 50 billion processors worldwide in various applications, a trend that will be ever increasing with the prevalence of the Internet of Things (IoT).
On 27 February 2014 ARM announced a worldwide University Program that would provide course packages to educational institutions around the globe. The course packages contain state-of-the-art ARM-based teaching resources for professors, course lab ARM-based hardware donated by program partners, and course lab software tools. The types of courses covered include, but are not limited to, embedded systems, IoT, SoCs, and DSP. ARM meanwhile is working on adding even more material for other areas. The program so far has been adopted by top educational institutes such as the University of Cambridge, the Imperial College of London, and Cornell University. The ARM university program, nevertheless, is not strictly about providing teaching material, it also introduces opportunities for researchers that are interested. More detail can be found in the links provided at the end of this article.
Keeping up with the latest trends in technology, Dr. Omar Hiari of the Computer Engineering department at GJU worked on enrolling GJU in the ARM University program. As of the February of 2017, GJU officially became part of the ARM University program. This makes GJU the first educational institute in the Middle East to be part of the ARM University Program. As a result, Dr. Hiari will initially be adopting the ARM IoT coursework in his CE442 Microcomputer Interface and Peripheral Devices course starting the second semester of the 2016/2017 academic year. The course will introduce the students with the knowledge required to design and build IoT embedded systems connecting sensors to smartphones over Bluetooth. This will be done using commodity cellphones and hardware development kits donated by Cypress semiconductor, one of the ARM University program partners.
Dr. Hiari stressed that this program opens up a world of opportunity for GJU students and professors by exposing them to the latest embedded system technology available today. Opportunities include internships or research collaboration with ARM itself or even one of many manufacturers that adopt the ARM architecture. Dr. Hiari also mentioned that in the future, the Computer Engineering department has plans on expanding further on the program by adopting System-on-Chip (SoC) coursework and potentially others. This program can also provide benefit to other GJU departments that would be interested.
For more information about the ARM University program, visit the ARM University website at https://www.arm.com/support/university/