The answer is functional safety applications. At least, that’s where TI’s ARM® Cortex™-R cores are utilized – in high performance, real-time microcontrollers. As many real-time applications are now required to integrate functional safety, our customers need controllers and the supporting safety materials to help them get their safety conforming products to market as quickly and painlessly as possible.
While extremely compatible from an instruction set perspective, the Cortex-R series processors differ from both the Cortex-A and Cortex-M series processors. Most notably, the Cortex-R core offers much higher performance than the Cortex-M while offering the deterministic operation that can be difficult to achieve with an application processor like the Cortex-A series. So, performance-wise the Cortex-R is positioned between Cortex-A and Cortex-M but, in general, is targeted in-silicon for microcontrollers vs. microprocessors.