Arm supplies CMSIS-Core device template files for the all supported Cortex-A processors and various compiler vendors. Refer to the list of Tested and Verified Toolchains for compliance.

These CMSIS-Core device template files include the following:

Register names of the Core Peripherals and names of the Core Exception Vectors.
Functions to access core peripherals, cache, MMU and special CPU instructions
Generic startup code and system configuration code.

CMSIS-Core Processor Files

The CMSIS-Core processor files provided by Arm are in the directory .\CMSIS\Core\Include. These header files define all processor specific attributes do not need any modifications.

The core_<cpu>.h defines the core peripherals and provides helper functions that access the core registers.

Header File	Target Processor Core
📂 CMSIS/Core/Include	CMSIS-Core include folder (See on GitHub)
┗ 📄 core_ca.h	Generics for all supported Cortex-A processors

Device Examples

The Cortex_DFP pack provides generic device definitions for supported Arm Cortex-A cores and contains corresponding CMSIS-Core device files.

Template Files

To simplify the creation of CMSIS-Core device files, the following template files are provided that should be extended by the silicon vendor to reflect the actual device and device peripherals. Silicon vendors add to these template files the following information:

Device Peripheral Access Layer that provides definitions for device-specific peripherals.
Access Functions for Peripherals (optional) that provides additional helper functions to access device-specific peripherals.
Interrupt vectors in the startup file that are device specific.

Template File	Description
📂 CMSIS/Core/Template/Device_A	Folder with CMSIS-Core device file templates (See on GitHub)
┣ 📂 Config	Template configuration files
┣ 📄 Device_ac6.sct	Linker scatter file template for Arm C/C++ Compiler
┗ 📄 mem_Device.h	Memory Configuration Files mem_<device>.h template
┣ 📂 Include	Template header files
┣ 📄 Device.h	Device Header File <Device.h> template
┗ 📄 system_Device.h	system_Device.h Template File
┗ 📂 Source	Template C files
┣ 📄 mmu_Device.c	Memory Management Unit Files mmu_<device>.c template
┣ 📄 startup_Device.c	Startup File startup_<Device>.c template
┗ 📄 system_Device.c	system_Device.c Template File

Adapt Template Files to a Device

The following steps describe how to adopt the template files to a specific device or device family. Copy the complete all files in the template directory and replace:

directory name 'Vendor' with the abbreviation for the device vendor e.g.: NXP.
directory name 'Device' with the specific device name e.g.: LPC17xx.
in the file names 'Device' with the specific device name e.g.: LPC17xx.

Each template file contains comments that start with ToDo: that describe a required modification. The template files contain place holders:

Placeholder	To be replaced with
`<Device>`	The specific device name or device family name, for example `LPC17xx`
`<DeviceInterrupt>`	The specific interrupt name of the device, for example `TIM1` for Timer 1 interrupt
`<DeviceAbbreviation>`	Short name or abbreviation of the device family, for example `LPC`
`Cortex-A#`	The specific Cortex-A processor name, for example `Cortex-A9`

The device configuration of the template files is described in detail on the following pages: