Arm® NEON™ technology is an advanced single instruction multiple data (SIMD [1]) architecture extension for the Arm® Cortex®-A Series.
NEON technology is intended to improve the multimedia user experience by accelerating audio and video encoding/decoding, user interface, 2D/3D graphics or gaming. NEON can also accelerate signal processing algorithms and functions to speed up applications such as audio and video processing, voice and facial recognition, computer vision and deep learning [2].
This article aims at helping programmers find valuable information and documentations on Arm NEON technology.
1. Presentation
Start reading the useful information and presentations on NEON technology available from Arm NEON technology official web site.
For technical details on Arm NEON, download the Cortex-A Series Programmer’s Guide (DEN 0013) from Arm infocenter [3]. The Arm NEON architecture overview and instructions set can be found in the "Introducing NEON" chapter.
To go further, download the Arm NEON Programmer’s Guide (DEN 0018) from Arm infocenter [3]. This document provides all technical details together with use case examples.
The article How to accelerate JPEG compression and decompression presents an use case accelerated thanks to the Arm NEON technology.
2. Ressources
Main reference documents:
- Cortex-A Series Programmer’s Guide (DEN 0013), "non-confidential restricted access" document available from Arm infocenter [3].
- Arm NEON Programmer’s Guide (DEN 0018), "non-confidential restricted access" document available from Arm infocenter [3].
Quick references:
- Arm NEON programming quick reference from Arm Community [4].
Linaro [5] ressources:
- Linaro Status on libraries using NEON: https://wiki.linaro.org/WorkingGroups/Middleware/Multimedia/NeonStatus.
- Linaro Graphics Working Group: https://wiki.linaro.org/WorkingGroups/Middleware/Graphics.
- Linaro presentation on "Codec Optimisation Best Practices": https://wiki.linaro.org/WorkingGroups/Middleware/Multimedia/Specs/1105/OptimizeCodecBestPractices.
3. References