Microcontroller platform suits varied designs

Each STM8 product family will deliver higher performance, increased robustness, short application design cycles, application design longevity and low total system cost.

STMicroelectronics has released details of a STM8 microcontroller platform, implemented around a high-performance 8bit core and a set of peripherals.

The platform will be manufactured using an 130nm embedded nonvolatile memory technology.

The STM8 platform will be the foundation for a number of product families, each optimised for specific application areas, including automotive, industrial, low-voltage and battery-operated applications, as well as application-specific standard products.

Each STM8 product family will deliver higher performance, increased robustness, short application design cycles, application design longevity and low total system cost.

The 8bit MCU market, currently worth about US $5 billion, is expected to continue showing healthy growth, with unit shipments expected to exceed 6500 million in 2011, compared to 4400 million in 2007.

In automotive applications alone, for example, unit growth between 2007 and 2013 is expected to be around 40%.

However, a key feature of the 8bit MCU market is the pressure to reduce the cost of implementing solutions and the STM8 platform has been designed to provide increased performance at significantly lower total system cost.

In performance, the STM8 leverages a Harvard architecture with 16bit index registers and stack pointer, a 16Mbyte linear address space, advanced addressing modes and other features designed to optimally support C-programming to deliver -edge CPU performance in both speed and code density.

The core reaches an average of 1.6 cycles per instruction with 20MIPS of peak performance at 24MHz using a three-stage pipeline.

The technology has been chosen with the aim of reducing system costs through a high integration level, the ability to embed nonvolatile data memory and to provide excellent analogue performance in a wide voltage range from 1.65V to 5.5V.

The I/O pads have been designed to withstand external disturbances, removing the expense of external protection elements.

The STM8 platform offers real embedded EEPROM with endurance and retention comparable to those of external components, making complex Flash-based emulation strategies obsolete.

The available on-chip Flash program memory sizes will range up to 256Kbyte.

The technology options allow high-speed operation as well as drastically reduced power consumption.

All these technological advantages will be available in automotive grade products that operate at temperatures of up to 145C.

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