Flash microcontrollers provide energy efficiency

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Oct 18, 2007

At 72MHz, executing from Flash, the STM32 consumes only 36mA, the lowest power consumption in the 32bit market, corresponding to 0.5mA/MHz.

Mouser Electronics has released the STM32 range of 32bit Flash microcontrollers, based on ARM Cortex-M3 core from STMicroelectronics.

The STM32 was designed to deliver high performance and energy efficiency while retaining all the benefits of working with the open, industry-standard ARM architecture and development environment.

The STM32 is offered in the STM32F103 Performance line, with a 72MHz clock frequency which provides 32bit MCU performance, and the STM32F101 Access line, with 36MHz clock frequency giving 16bit devices a significant increase in performance at the same 16bit level prices.

Both lines offer 32K to 128K of embedded Flash memory, but differ in maximum SRAM size and peripheral combinations.

At 72MHz, executing from Flash, the STM32 consumes only 36mA, the lowest power consumption in the 32bit market, corresponding to 0.5mA/MHz.

The STM32 ARM Cortex-M3 core contains features designed for embedded applications requiring a combination of high-performance, low power and low cost.

The STM32 benefits from Cortex-M3's new architectural enhancements including the Thumb-2 instruction set to deliver improved performance with better code density and a tightly-coupled nested vectored interrupt controller for significantly faster response to all interrupts, all combined with low power consumption.

Ideal for battery-operated applications, the STM32 operates form a 2.0 to 3.6V power supply and has a power consumption down to 2uA in standby mode with reset circuitry active.

Other power-saving features include an integrated RTC with dedicated pin-for-battery operation, a 32kHz oscillator and four low-power modes.

The rich peripheral set includes up to 128Kbyte embedded Flash, up to 20Kbyte of RAM, up to two ADCs, up to three UARTs, up to two SPI, up to two I2C, up to three 16bit timers and a dedicated 6-PWM timer with embedded dead times for regulation and motor control vector drive applications, as well as USB, CAN and seven DMA channels.