During the recent STM32 Portfolio MEDIA LAUNCH: STM32U0 + Edge AI Press Briefing, Sridhar ETHIRAJ, Sr.Technical Marketing and Applications Manager, Microcontrollers, India, (APEC region) STMicroelectronics, exchanged his vantage with The Volt Post. During the interview, Sridhar elaborates on ST’s latest STM32 portfolio, the company’s AI-edge supporting product portfolio. He highlights about ST’s innovation in MCUs and MPUs products to tap trends in the AI-enabled applications and adds ST policy on RISC-V in MCUs. Edited Excerpts Below.
How ST’s latest STM32 portfolio is deemed as a game-changer for IoT innovations in the connected world?
We are enabling this digitalization and supporting customer needs through edge-focused AI across our technology and portfolio for around 10 years (see the next answer)
- Our AI-edge supporting product portfolio includes microcontrollers, microprocessors and smart sensors.
– Microcontrollers and microprocessors from the STM32 portfolio family we see as the de-facto edge computing engine behind the world’s digitalization. It is a family addressing mainly mass market, with 100K+ customers.
What advancements or trends is ST focusing in the AI-enabled applications with MCUs and MPUs products?
We believe that all devices in the Internet of Things will become much more autonomous. And at the same time, all these things will be cloudified, increasingly not only creating but processing data locally, at the edge.
In other words, we see a world of smart everything, where billions of things become more intelligent, more connected, and more secure. We are at the beginning of a massive wave, which will accelerate digitalization of industries. We call it the Cloud-Connected Intelligent Edge.
Today, AI is used in almost every market segment, digitalizing automotive, industrial as well as personal electronics, impacting our lives at home or at work every day. AI will be a game changer especially for many industrial applications. This is a very different kind of AI, directly at the tiny edge, on devices, and powered by a different set of chips and software stack.
We are enabling this digitalization and supporting customer needs through edge-focused AI across our technology and portfolio for around 10 years
What are the key features of the STM32U0 microcontroller?
STM32U0 is the latest generation of entry-level ultra-low-power MCUs. It is the ideal combination between energy consumption, features, and cost, enabling more design freedom in entry-level, battery-operated devices.
It is the first MCU running on an Arm® Cortex®-M0+ targeting SESIP Level 3, PSA-Certified Level 1, and NIST certifications
- Energy savings and longer product usage:
- The STM32U0 benefits from a better power consumption in active mode and low power modes as well as innovative and versatile ways to wake-up from low-power modes.
- Integrated features:
- The STM32U0 embeds a lot of features: segment display, a high number of analog peripherals: ADC, DAC, comparators and Opamps and an essential security set for firmware code protection.
- Cost effectiveness:
- The STM32U0 is an entry cost product. The STM32U0 is offered at an attractive price point.In addition, due to integrated high oscillators, the STM32U0 removes the use of external crystal to lower the total BOM cost.
The STM32L0 is highly recommended especially for lower Flash densities (equal or inferior to 64kB). The STM32L0 offers also an embedded EEPROM and a unique very low power consumption at high temperature. STM32U0 contributes to a more sustainable approach as its reduces power consumption in end devices as compared to previous product generations.
What is ST policy on RISC-V in MCUs?
We are in monitoring mode. We have been clear on the fact that in some parts of our portfolio non-exposed as core, non-exposed to the developer community, meaning in a black box fashion for running state machine, we have instantiation of some of our own RISC-V implementation is some of our products.