July 4, 2014, Seoul — STMicroelectronics (ST), a global semiconductor company contributing to customers across a wide range of electronic applications, has launched new low-voltage chips for the STM32 family. These new products can help reduce the challenges developers face when adding companion chips to low-voltage host processors. As microcontrollers specifically focused on low voltage, they not only connect to the same digital power domain as the host, such as a 1.8V power supply, but also support on-chip peripherals to operate at high voltages as low as 3.3V, thereby resolving frequent performance trade-offs at low supply voltages.

The newly released STM32F038/48/58/78 and STM32F318/28/58/78 are ideal low-power companion microcontrollers that allow for flexible design partitioning. In particular, the combination of a 1.8V digital supply voltage and an independent analog domain proves its true value when a wide analog dynamic range is required or when direct connection to a USB device is necessary.

It also provides multi-purpose processing and memory configuration. The STM32F0x8 chip features an ARM® Cortex®-M0 core combined with up to 128KB of on-chip flash memory, while the STM32F3x8 chip is based on an ARM Cortex-M4 core with a DSP instruction set and floating-point unit and is equipped with up to 512KB of flash memory. Extensive compatibility of pins, peripherals, and software is ensured between the two types of low-voltage products as well as with other STM32F0 and STM32F3 series, guaranteeing unrivaled design flexibility and scalability.

With this low-voltage product line, developers can enjoy the same functional benefits as the major product series, the STM32F0 and STM32F3, without any compromise or degradation in processing performance due to the lower voltage. Additionally, cost advantages can be gained by simplifying hardware implementation.

These new products are highly suitable for portable consumer applications such as smartphones, accessories, and media devices, and are available in low-profile CSP, UQFN, and UFBGA packages, as well as TSSOP and LQFP packages. The full range of available package options extends from 20-pin configurations to 100-pin configurations.