After diving into a myriad of details about EM•Mark in our recent blog posts [ 006 - 011 ] , let's lighten the load a bit and quickly highlight some ongoing development efforts – which we'll discuss in upcoming blog posts over the next few months. So back to work we go !! 
Our final set of EM•Mark results turns CoreMark inside out: rather than running N iterations of the benchmark in a finite loop, we'll continuously run a single benchmark cycle before entering "deep-sleep" – helping us measure MCU energy efficiency in a more realistic setting.
Having shown how small(er) EM programs can in fact execute fast(er) – especially when fetching instructions from zero wait-state SRAM – EM•Mark now reveals the (even greater) impact of program size on the power consumption of resource-constrained MCUs.
While we normally must choose between optimize-for-size and optimize-for-speed options when compiling application programs, our second set of EM•Mark results will confirm that small(er) programs can execute fast(er) – a key premise of the EM language and runtime.
With its tiny code → tiny chips mantra capturing the essence of the EM programming language, it should come as no surprise that our first set of EM•Mark results will focus on program size – comparing legacy CoreMark (written in C) with its EM language counterpart.
We've now added the ability for readers to leave comments at the end of each Blogging EM post – anything from a quick 
reaction to a short question about the content to a free-form discussion on any interesting topics raised by the blog post. Let's hear from you !!!
Virtually all MCU vendors run CoreMark® – the premier industry benchmark for measuring CPU performance within embedded systems. But to best capture the additional memory and power constraints of typical EM applications, we've transformed CoreMark into EM•Mark .
EM relies upon two complementary optimization techniques – whole-program [ WPO ] and application-centric [ ACO ] – which work in tandem inside the EM language translator, yielding more efficient executable images than equivalent programs written directly in C/C++.
Popular IDEs such as Eclipse and VS Code have elevated "support for language X " to one of their most vital features. To that end, our recently published EM Builder extension – freely available from the VS Code marketplace – now brings the EM language into the fold.
Vendor data sheets might specify that an ultra-low-power MCU draws (say) 700 nA @ 3 V when in its "deep-sleep" mode. Very nice – but until we factor in our application workload, we have no way to truly assess the impact of these MCU specs on overall energy efficiency.