• ARM System-on-Chip Architecture (2nd Edition) | | | |
• ARM Assembly Language - an Introduction | | | |
• ARM Architecture Reference Manual (2nd Edition) | | | |
• The Definitive Guide to the ARM Cortex-M3 (Embedded Technology) | | | |
• Embedded Linux Primer: A Practical Real-World Approach | | | |

Good ARM book
Review written by: Dimitar From VA
The book is very well written and the language is easy to understand, as long as you have some basic knowledge about assembly language and C programming.

A must have for all software engineers working with ARM
Review written by: Stanislav Sedov From Moscow, Russia
Whether you're developing a small automotive application runned ARM7 or working on a real-time or timeshared operating system involving ARM platform this book is definitely a must-have desk guide. In this book you'll find a thorough description of modern ARM cores and their differences, hints and tips on managing caches and TLB mappings, working with MMU and MPU, handling exceptions and keeping the pipeline loaded by writing effective code. The book also covers ARM DSP extensions, THUMB instruction set and gives a handy list of heavily optimized primitives for common operations like arithmetics, bit operations and random numbers generation.

Not perfect, but its the best available
Review written by: Soon Yau Cheong From Malaysia
Simply put, this is the must-have-book for any ARM programmer as I think this is the best or perhaps the only useful book of its kind available.

I like the chapter "Efficient C Programming" that tells you how to optimize your code in general and specifically for ARM architecture. However, I do not like the idea of making some complicated tricks in assembly language just to get rid of one instruction in a function. The working assembly code optimized for mathematics calculation and signal processing application could be valuable for those pursuing high computation power. The explanation of cache and MMU are very detailed and clear. Whereas the walkthrough on assembly language is quite an easy one.

However, it is quite a shame that less focus has been given to some general but essential features such as exception handling, bootloading and real time operating system. There was little or no word on the compilation, linking, tools, simulator which will be of great help for the user to kickstart an ARM project.

Some complained the lacking of information in ARM11 and later processor, well, that is reasonable if you take a look at the publishing date. Anyway, the content of this book is still relevant and useful for many ARM7/9-powered microprocessor being used in the market.

Complete expert-ARM guide
Review written by: Jorge E. Loya Hernandez From Tijuana, B.C. MEXICO
This book covers all necessary topics to know ARM evolution, general ARM architecture organisation and ARM programming.

Also, introduces to Thumb architecture, but it doesn't touch the Cortex family (as expected, since Cortex is a recent architecture).

Written in a mid-tecnhical style, it's recommended to have ARM specific data sheet and ARM instruction set to know specific details about the ARM processor used.

Very clear and detailed, good reference
Review written by: Daniel J. Romaniuk From Dubai, UAE
The authors have done a wonderful job of taking something complicated and making it very simple, without dumbing it down. They explain why and how, and the material is well organized. There are useful reference tables scattered throughout. There is no attempt at humor, and I'm grateful for it.

Highlights include discussions about registers, Arm multiple load/store instructions, the Arm function calling convention, tactics for writing fast C and assembler, DSP implementation, memory management, and assembler code for things like division. The chapters on firmware and basic OS implementation each show a simple yet functional implementation.

My only complaint is that there's nothing practical in here about IO, not even JTAG. The authors have limited themselves to the ARM core only, perhaps because there are many differences between the microprocessors that use it. This makes the title a bit misleading - in my view a System Developer's Guide should have enough information so that you can at least write a "Hello World" program of some sort, even if it doesn't work on everybody's hardware.

So to do anything practical, you'll have to track down a lot more documentation for your specific microcontroller. Still, five stars for the clear, detailed information on the topics it does cover. I will certainly be using it as a reference.