The Thumb-2 Instruction Set


The "Cortex" (ARMv6/v7) family introduced Thumb-2
It extended the thumb instruction set
Thumb now accesses all registers (not only 8 of them)
It includes coprocessor instructions
New ITE instruction (if then else)
It is a separate instruction decoder, not a decompressor any more

The company also changed the boot vectors
There used to be 8 _instructions_ at address 00..1f
Now the "VIC" is offered as part of the core
Vectors are now pointers rather than instructions (and many of them)
It is now possible to make thumb-only devices

The cortex-m family is a microcontroller flavour, thumb-2 only.