The awards, which were presented at the recent Embedded World Exhibition and Conference in Nuremberg, commended leading tools developer Hitex for its application-focused software supporting the STM32 PerformanceStick low-cost development package. Special features such as the Hitex DashBoard function provide a graphical view of MCU operation under different conditions, enhancing developers’ understanding of important performance parameters including execution speed, power consumption, operation in low-power modes, and code density. Users can modify the STM32 configuration via DashBoard and view the effects of changes while the application is running.
STM32 PerformanceStick is the only development system for the STM32 to be designed around the concept of evaluating the MCU by direct display of its performance information. The PerformanceStick itself includes an STM32 microcontroller, 128 Kbytes of Flash, and 20 Kbytes of RAM, and plugs directly into the USB port of a host PC for programming and application debugging. An optional I/O board provides access to the STM32 peripherals, making the PerformanceStick an ideal fast prototyping platform.
The STM32 family is based on the 32-bit ARM® Cortex™-M3 core, which combines 1.25 Dhrystone MIPS/MHz processing performance with architectural enhancements that enable superior performance, code density, real-time behavior, and power consumption. These include a nested vector-interrupt controller with down to 6 CPU cycles inter-interrupt latency, atomic bit manipulation allowing individual bits to be modified in a single write operation, branch speculation, single-cycle multiply, hardware divide, and the highly efficient Thumb-2 instruction set delivering improved performance and code density.
At 72MHz, executing from Flash, the STM32 consumes only 36mA, the lowest power consumption in the 32-bit market, corresponding to an impressive 0.5mA/MHz.
