Ultra low power technology platform

It will, claims the semiconductor specialist, enable future generations of electronic products to consume less power, meet energy efficiency standards and operate for longer from batteries. The new platform is built on a 130nm process, which ST has further optimised with low leakage transistors for logic functions, low voltage transistors for analogue functions, low power embedded memory, and a power management architecture. According to ST, these enhancements reduce dynamic and static power consumption, with the potential to enable future families of microcontrollers to deliver a high performance per Watt. ST will introduce the first new microcontrollers, the STM8L and STM32L, later in 2009 as part of its ultra low power product paths for the 8bit STM8S and 32bit STM32F families. The microcontrollers have been designed to achieve power consumption as low as 150µA/MHz from Flash and HALT mode power consumption as low as 300nA while maintaining sram content and registers. Jim Nicholas (pictured), general manager of ST's microcontrollers division, said: "The new STM8L and STM32L microcontrollers built on this platform will naturally extend the STM8S and STM32F families, which already include several product paths optimised for accessibility, high performance, and flexible connectivity. Product developers will use the new devices to take advantage of today's most advanced and efficient processor architectures in fast growing markets such as portable medical devices and e-metering, as well as emerging opportunities where long battery life, small battery sizes, or battery-less operation are required."