MCUs balance power consumption with processing demand

18th September 2015

Mick Elliott

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The latest STM32L4 32-bit microcontrollers from STMicroelectronics are in stock at distributor Mouser Electronics. The ultra-low-power microcontrollers are based on the ARM Cortex-M4 32-bit RISC core operating at a frequency of up to 80MHz. The microcontrollers leverage ST’s low power technologies including voltage scaling to balance power consumption with processing demand and include seven low-power management modes to give designers flexibility to optimise power consumption in a broad range of applications.

The micrcocontrollers are based on the ARM Cortex‑M4 core with a floating point unit (FPU), which supports all ARM single-precision data-processing instructions and data types. Run current is a low 112µA/MHz.

The devices feature ST’s Adaptive Real-Time memory Accelerator (ART Accelerator), which allows zero-wait states out of the 64-bit program flash at a clock speed of 80MHz. This accelerator technology implements an innovative instruction pre-fetch queue and branch cache resulting in near 100 DMIPS performance.

The devices embed high-speed memories (up to 1 Mbyte of flash memory and up to 128 Kbytes of SRAM), a flexible external memory controller for static memories (for devices with packages of 100 pins and more), a quad SPI flash memories interface, and an extensive range of enhanced I/Os and peripherals connected to two APB buses, two AHB buses, and a 32-bit multi-AHB bus matrix.

The devices offer three fast 12-bit analogue-to-digital converters (ADCs), two comparators, two operational amplifiers, two digital-to-analogue converter (DAC) channels, an internal voltage reference buffer, a low-power RTC, two general-purpose 32-bit timers, two 16-bit PWM timers dedicated to motor control, seven general-purpose 16-bit timers, and two 16-bit low-power timers.

The microcontrollers support four digital filters for external sigma-delta modulators. Additionally, up to 24 capacitive sensing channels are available. The devices also embed an integrated 8×40 or 4×44 LCD driver with internal step-up converter.

Mouser also stocks a complete range of STM32L4 evaluation kits including the STM32L4 Discovery Kit (STM32L476G-DISCO), STM32L4 Nucleo board (NUCLEO-L476RG) and STM32L4 Evaluation board (STM32L476G-EVAL). The STM32L4 ecosystem is completed with STM32Cube support for the STM32L4 microcontrollers.

The devices suit smart connected and Internet of Things (IoT) applications, as well as a wide variety of industrial, medical and consumer products.