M3 based mcu 'meets UK design needs'

Frederic Gaillard, an ST microcontroller product marketing engineer, said the objective of the STM32 range was to bring new degrees of freedom to developers by offering good power efficiency, a good peripheral set and high levels of integration. “But a good micro starts with a good engine,” he claimed, “so we chose the Cortex-M3 core because it offer 1.25Dhrystone MIPS/MHz.” ST says the devices in the family run from a supply between 2 and 3.6V, drawing a maximum of 36mA at 72MHz with all peripherals clocked. With peripherals off, power consumption is 22mA and standby mode draws 2µA. There will be two lines in the family. The Performance range will run at 72MHz, while the Access range will run at 36MHz. Both feature up to 128k of flash, but offer different sram capacities. UK manager Ollie Althorpe believes the part brings specifications that will be attractive to UK designers. “It’s a world leading device; battery capable and powerful. It hits where the UK market needs it to hit and gives the UK’s small and medium sized companies the ability to tackle new applications.”