- Launch of the STM32 F3 Series with excellent price competitiveness and efficiency
- Cortex-M4 core further enhanced with DSP and FPU, integration of peripherals including enhanced analog.
- Expanding the STM32 product family portfolio to over 70 devices

July 17, 2012, Seoul – STMicroelectronics (ST), a global semiconductor company providing a wide range of electronic applications, is launching the new STM32 F3 microcontroller series and presenting prototypes to key customers. This is expected to enable early evaluation of the new product family featuring ARM® Cortex™-M cores among the company's diverse product lines.

The STM32 F3 microcontroller is a Cortex-M4 core-based SoC device equipped with an FPU, optimized for the effective processing of mixed signals in circuits such as 3-phase motor control, biometrics, industrial sensor outputs, and audio filters. Consequently, it will contribute to PCB size reduction, reduced power consumption, and design simplification for consumer goods, medical devices, portable health equipment, and system monitoring and metering applications. Design engineers can leverage the F3 series to target mixed-signal control applications, which is expected to significantly expand the scope of application for the STM32 product family.

The STM32 F3 series is an ARM Cortex-M4-based product equipped with a multi-purpose analog network and FPU, offering mid-to-low memory sizes at a reasonable price point. The FPU-equipped Cortex-M4 core enhances the performance of the existing Cortex-M3-based STM32 F1 product by expanding DSP capabilities through optimized single-cycle and saturated arithmetic instructions and a Floating-Point Unit (FPU). This product family is positioned between ST’s best-selling STM32 F1 and the highest-performing STM32 F4 product family. The STM32 F4 features a Cortex-M4 core with an FPU, large memory capacity, and a high-speed CPU operating frequency (up to 168 MHz), making it capable of handling complex applications.

With the STM32 family, including the newly released F3 microcontroller, ST is now able to offer over 350 diverse solutions ranging from basic specifications at reasonable prices to applications providing high performance and various on-chip capabilities. This means that the benefits provided by STM32 devices and the related ecosystem can now be applied to applications such as high-performance motor controllers or embedded digital audio, which previously required high-performance analog and basic digital signal controllers.

Michel Buffa, General Manager of the Microcontroller Business Unit at STMicroelectronics, stated, “With the latest F3 series, ST’s ARM Cortex-M4 portfolio has expanded to over 70 devices, enabling customers to design more powerful products by leveraging the advantages of the STM32 family. The combination of this product’s advanced processor, high-quality advanced analog peripherals, and medium-density memory is powerful in a way that other Cortex-based or proprietary solution-based devices cannot match.”

It was added that the STM32 F3 series devices are packages containing digital peripherals recently improved by ST for the STM32 family, and that this will serve as an even stronger strength due to their extensive compatibility across all of ST's ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers.