Rich ecosystem supports DSI-ready MCUs

30th October 2015

Barney Scott

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A richly featured development ecosystem including boards and software support heralds the start of volume production for STMicroelectronics’ high-performance STM32F469/479 MCUs. The first in the world to integrate the MIPI-DSI controller, the units deliver the industry’s highest ARM Cortex-M4 processor performance of 608 CoreMark at 180MHz and, with up to 2MB dual-bank Flash and 384KB RAM, are capable of supporting the most advanced IoT and wearable applications.

As the world’s first MCUs to integrate the advanced MIPI-DSI controller, and leveraging ST’s proprietary Chrom-ART Accelerator, the product line brings smartphone-like GUIs to everyday objects. The devices also integrate a Flexible Memory Controller (FMC), dual Quad-SPI serial Flash interfaces, and extended connectivity including Ethernet MAC, SDMMC, USB and camera interface to enable richer consumer, industrial and medical applications.

The rich development ecosystem helps designers unleash the capabilities of the MCUs. In addition to the high-end evaluation boards STM32469I-EVAL and STM32479I-EVAL with added cryptographic capability, the ARM mbed-enabled $61.20 STM32F469I-DISCO Discovery Board comes with a WVGA MIPI-DSI colour touchscreen providing easy access to this advanced and efficient serial display-interface technology. All boards feature embedded demonstration software that highlights the MCU capabilities and the advanced graphics performance achievable with high-resolution displays.

Further powerful features of theDiscovery Board include 16MB QSPI Flash and 16MB SDRAM memory extensions, USB full-speed OTG connector, audio codec, audio line-out, microSD connector, and three MEMS microphones that allow developers to explore beam forming and noise reduction. There are also pin headers for accessing all MCU I/Os, and Arduino connectors that allow functionality expansion and easy prototyping of the most advanced embedded applications by choosing from the wide range of existing STM32 Nucleo expansion boards and other Arduino shields.

The STM32 Cube embedded software package simplifies and accelerates application development by providing peripheral drivers, software libraries and stacks, and a large number of implementation examples. The associated STM32CubeMX tool simplifies configuration and initialisation to ensure an easy start-up. A choice of leading graphic libraries takes advantage of the STM32F469/479 integrated graphics-acceleration features and helps developers create advanced GUIs. STM32F469/479 product lines are also supported by a large choice of IDEs including IAR EWARM, Keil MDK-ARM, and the free-of-charge AC6 System workbench for STM32.