The STM32 family of 32-bit MCUs’ are based on the Arm Cortex®-M processor designed to offer new degrees of freedom to MCU users. It offers products combining, very high performance, real-time capabilities, digital signal processing, low power / low voltage operation and connectivity, while maintaining full integration and ease of development. STMicroelectronics has taken the next level in the STM32 series, making the most affordable entry into the cost-sensitive 8-bit applications bringing a 32-bit technological leap with the STM32C0 series MCUs, which is now in high-volume production and available for shipment, covered by ST’s 10-year longevity program.
Entry level STM32 MCU family takes aim at 8-bit market. Sridhar ETHIRAJ, Sr. Manager – Technical Marketing & Applications, India, General-Purpose Microcontrollers Sub-Group, STMicroelectronics shares more insights about this product in this exclusive interview:
How does it break the cost barrier and challenges of existing MCUs?
The unparalleled range of STM32 series of MCUs’ are already based on an industry-standard core, with a vast range of tools and software to support project development, making this family of products ideal for both small projects and end-to-end platforms. The STM32C0 product line features an Arm® Cortex®-M0+ core and runs up to 48 MHz setting the lowest STM32 price point ever, the STM32C0 line makes no compromise on design quality and delivers a performance far beyond the existing 8-bit architectures. Hence the STM32C0 effectively becomes STMicroelectronics’ most affordable 32-bit MCU series & cost effective STM32 MCU. The STM32C0 bridges the gap between the 8- pr 16-bit CPU and higher performance 32-bit MCU, making the 32-bit capabilities accessible to all developers. It also ensures reduced costs without impacting design, quality, and reliability, built on the same platform as STM32G0. The next generation of smart appliances and industrial controller must be easy to use, ultra-competitively priced and with assured supply.
What advantages do we have in terms of power consumption?
The STM32 MCUs are already used in billions of smart industrial, medical and consumer products worldwide due to its low power consumption advantage. It is very popular with design engineers as it offers products combining very high performance, real-time capabilities, digital signal processing, low-power/low-voltage operation and connectivity, while maintaining full integration and ease of development. In assuring availability, STMicroelectronics targets the new STM32C0 series to equipment like Home Appliances, Industrial Pumps, Fans, Smoke Detectors, typically served by the simpler 8-bit and 16-bit MCUs’. The modern, 32-bit design of the STM32C0 permits improvements such as faster response, extra functions and network connection at similar overall cost and power consumption.
What new features have been added to this series?
The STM32C0 series offers up to 32 Kbytes of flash memory and 6 to 12 Kbytes of RAM and it comes with a variety of 8- to 48- pin packages, down to 1.70 x 1.42 mm. Apart from the obvious advantage for engineers to easily port their code from one MCU series to another, to leverage on a rich ecosystem and to accelerate innovation, STMicroelectronics has engineered the new STM32C0 series to let designers do more with less.
The MCUs’ are housed in small and economical packages with only one pair of external power connections, making more I/O pins available for the application while lowering bill-of-materials costs. Also, an on-board, high-accuracy (1%) clock saves external timing components. STM32C0 devices allow easy migration into the STM32G0 series to tackle more demanding projects, sharing a consistent pinout. The new series integrates up to date peripherals, including a 1.7 MSPS analog-digital converter (ADC) with hardware for 16-bit over-sampling multiple timers including an advanced control timer for applications like motor control. Leveraging the STM32 platform, the new MCUs provide DMA (direct memory access) channels that boost application performance and efficiency. They run at up to 48MHz and deliver 44 DMIPS instruction throughput with CoreMark performance/efficiency of 114, drawing just 80µA/MHz in run mode.
Tell us about the development ecosystem for STM32C0 series, does ST provide any tools, dev. Boards or stacks for developers to begin with?
The STM32C0 series connects designers with the highly regarded STM32 development ecosystem. An STM32C0 Nucleo (NUCLEO-C031C6) low-cost development board and two STM32C0 Discovery Kits (STM32C0116-DK and STM32C0316-DK) are available. Software resources include STM32C0 support in the STM32CubeMX configuration tool, Microsoft Azure RTOS, and the STM32Cube C0 MCU package with Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) and low-layer libraries.
Visit to know more: https://blog.st.com/stm32c0/
