STMicro to launch 8-bit, 32-bit microcontrollers

BANGALORE, INDIA: Less power, energy efficiency and longer battery life will be what microcontroller major STMicroelectronics would look at when it lines up its new ultra-low-power technology platform for building a range of 8-bit and 32-bit microcontrollers.

The NYSE-listed company says the new range of 8-bit and 32-bit microcontrollers would have the capability to enable future generations of electronic products to consume less power, meet evolving energy-efficiency standards, and operate for longer from their batteries.

It is being expected that ST might roll out the first new microcontrollers, christened STM8L and STM32L, based on this ultra-low-power platform later this year itself. The first STM8L products are already sampling to key OEMs, said the company.

The new development is expected to be the start of new ultra-low-power product paths for the 8-bit STM8S and 32-bit STM32F families achieving dynamic power consumption as low as 150µA/MHz from Flash, and HALT-mode power consumption as low as 300nA while maintaining SRAM content and registers.

ST's new platform is built on a 130nm process. The company has optimized this platform with ultra-low-leakage transistors for logic functions, low-voltage transistors for analog functions, innovative low-power embedded memory, new low-voltage low-power standard peripherals and an innovative power-management architecture, it said.

ST has incorporated all enhancements to reduce dynamic and static power consumption, enabling forthcoming families of microcontrollers delivering better performance per watt than the most frugal low-power devices on the market.

Further, its 130nm digital transistors optimized for low leakage reduce the microcontroller’s current draw in normal operation as well as in power-saving modes. Besides, the low-power embedded non-volatile memory reduces the energy consumed to handle application data.

The enhanced analog transistors are functional down to 1.65V, enabling low-voltage operation of the on-chip analog circuitry. The power-management architecture also saves power in all modes through techniques such as low-voltage operation of the core and ultra-fast 4-microseconds wake-up from low-power states.

The dedicated digital libraries and a new low-power system-on-chip (SoC) design flow will enable ST to expand its ultra-low-power microcontroller families and deliver new devices to market quickly, the company stated.