ST said its first M0+ MCU will make opponents nervous

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In order to help customers develop computer peripherals, health monitors/trackers, industrial sensors and smart home products with first-class battery life and slim design, STMicroelectronics has officially announced the latest STM32L0 microcontroller. The series, which has an ARM Cortex-M0+ core, optimized architecture, power management mode, ultra-low power peripherals, support for energy-efficient USB functions, and a unique ultra-low-power manufacturing process, is being used by ST Greater China and Asia Pacific Controller market and application director JAMES WIART is seen as a killer for its competitors.

2013 global general MCU vendor rankings

The data provided by the ST shows that the STM32L0 reduces the operating mode power consumption to 87μA/MHz. When all the RAM data is retained, the stop mode power consumption is 440nA, and the low-power timer is integrated, and the fast wake-up time reaches 3.5μs. Application designers can take advantage of different low-power modes; for the rapid increase in product power consumption with increasing temperature, ST's unique manufacturing process has set the world's smallest power consumption record at 125°C; The series also integrates the world's lowest power ADC. At 100k samples per second, the on-chip 12-bit ADC consumes only 48μA, and the built-in hardware oversampling increases the ADC resolution to 16 bits.

STM32L0 series power consumption

STM32L0 operating temperature

The series currently has more than 30 basic entry-level products, in addition to entry-level configurations, models with a USB interface and an optional LCD controller (up to 8x28). The full-speed USB module supports no external crystal oscillator operation, USB charge detection (BCD) and link layer power management (LPM). In terms of packaging, ST is available in a variety of packages from 2.7x2.7mm WLCSP36 to 10x10mm LQFP64, integrating up to 64KB of flash, 8KB of SRAM and 2KB of EEPROM.

STM32L0 series

ST ultra low power microcontroller product line

Since wearable products are a key area of ​​interest for the STM32L0MCU, JAMES WIART naturally focuses on the company's product layout in the wearable market. At present, ST's STM32 MCUs for wearable devices fall into four categories: low-power L0 and L1 series are positioned on smart wristbands; F401 is positioned on high-end smart wristbands, sports watches, etc., clocked at 84MHz, using 3x3mm WLCSP The advantage of packaging is to achieve the best balance of power performance; F429 is positioned in high-end smart watches, using Chrom-ART Accelerator technology, twice the performance of MCU alone, the advantage is built-in TFT LCD controller and SDRAM controller.

On the other hand, with the increasing number of MEMS sensors on wearable devices and smart hardware, it is becoming more common to use MCUs as Sensor Hub to control all sensors. HAKIM JAAFAR, Marketing Manager of ST STM32 Ultra Low Power Series Microcontrollers, said that in addition to providing hardware, ST will also cooperate with third-party partners to provide algorithms, protocol stacks and application layer software such as sleep quality detection, motion detection, and freedom. Falling, walking, running, etc.

But he is not optimistic about some solutions that integrate MCU and MEMS in the market, because "if we do this, we will need at least a product combination of 3x3 or 4x4, that is, 16 kinds of four MCUs and four kinds of MEMS. Products, to a certain extent, this is not a very feasible solution for customers and ST. Therefore, ST's strategy will still be to provide different types of MCU and MEMS sensor products according to different needs, thus maintaining great flexibility. Sex."

At the event site, ST highlighted the STM32L0-based "Weather Station" design. In addition to the STM32L0MCU, it also includes the ST MEMS pressure sensor HTS221, the humidity/temperature sensor HTS221 and the digital UV sensor UVIS3. It is regarded as the prototype of the first intelligent air detection device "Air Fruit" released by the "Ink Weather" developer ink cloud.

Design of "Weather Station" Based on STM32L0

"Air Fruit" uses ST high-end 32-bit MCU and a large number of MEMS sensors (temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide, PM2.5, noise and gravity sensors), in addition to the use of ink weather APP control, users can also use gestures, voice and touch Take control. In addition, Air Fruit also supports air quality voice announcements and alarm clocks, which alert you when air quality is unhealthy.

Designing an ultra-low-power MCU with the Cortex-M0+ core is the first time for ST. However, its competitors acquired the ARM license and developed the design two years ago. Does this mean that ST has lost most of its products in this market? Good market timing? Cao Jindong, senior manager of ST China's microcontroller market, denied this. He emphasized the importance of promoting and building a complete MCU ecosystem for ST, as it involves hardware such as chips, board-level design and solution design, as well as operating systems and a large number of software applications. "In fact, for the MCU, the kernel only occupies a very small area, and the remaining area is composed of Flash, RAM, logic, and peripherals. Therefore, ST will have a lot of space to make differentiated content, including mature and stable. Process, optimized architecture design and peripheral IP, capacity planning, etc. More importantly, the STM32L0 product is fully compatible with the existing STM32, and can be quickly converted to this low-power product for existing designs."

To further expand the STM32L0 open ecosystem, ST also introduced three other complementary products, the STM32L0 Discovery Kit, the Power Calculator and the Nucleo Board. Among them, ePaper display, linear capacitive touch sensor and self-detection system are installed on the exploration kit board, users can measure real-time power consumption; power consumption calculator function is included in the enhanced STM32CubeMX design tool to help new product users reach Ultra-low power target; Nucleo board provides Morpho and Arduino compatible interfaces, fully supporting the mbed.org standard, providing a fast track for product developers including Maker. According to ST, the sales volume of the Nucleo circuit board reached 3,000 on the first day, and the sales volume in one month was as high as 17,000. In addition, the STM32L0 Nucleo board and exploration kit will integrate an ST-Link/V2 hardware debugger with optimized STM32L0 microcontroller-specific routine code running on the Nucleo evaluation board and exploration kit.