STMicroelectronics has released its STM32G4 microcontroller to improve the performance, energy efficiency and safety of next-generation digital power applications

The new generation of intelligent electronic products presents some new application trends, such as adding more sensor-driven functions and adopting more efficient power technologies such as silicon carbide and gallium nitride to save electricity.In response to these trends, STMicroelectronics (ST), the world's leading semiconductor supplier spanning multiple electronic applications, has launched the next generation of microcontrollers.

For advanced digital power applications, consumer electronics and industrial equipment, STM32G4's new series of microcontrollers introduce two new hardware mathematical accelerators to improve the processing speed of applications, and use various technologies such as Cordic algorithm and filter function to improve performance and energy efficiency.Mathematical accelerators are used to speed up calculations, such as triangulation in energy-saving motor control algorithms for appliances or air conditioners, and filtering in signal tuning or digital power control algorithms, which are faster and more efficient than general master processors.In addition, this load reduction allows the kernel to free up more resources for receiving more sensor data and controlling other user functions.

The STM32G4 has other new features, such as built-in features for high-resolution power conversion timers that free up CPU resources and simplify the development process.The performance of analog peripherals and converters is improved significantly.High-speed connection technology makes external events respond faster;Support the latest Power Delivery usb-c interface, the maximum output Power of 100W, can charge the device quickly or conveniently.

"Cutting-edge consumer electronics and industrial equipment can do more with less with the STM32G4 family of innovative technologies," said Ricardo de-sa-earp, general manager of stmicrocontroller at stmicroelectronics.The STM32F3 series, which integrates rich and enhanced peripherals and industry standard Arm kernel, was launched in the microcontroller market as never before.Today, our latest microcontroller, STM32G4, continues the STM32F3 gene, further expanding its application range and simplifying its design, reducing power consumption and improving performance."

With faster computing speed, higher precision and higher functional integration, STM32G4 MCU support equipment improves functionality and energy efficiency. Target applications include intelligent life, intelligent factory and intelligent energy, such as electric bicycle and other electric vehicles, digital power, advanced motor control, lighting, building automation and so on.

In addition, an extensible secure storage area is used to store sensitive information such as keys.Protect the real-time update of firmware safety;Debugging access disabled function after programming can reduce potential threats;Other security mechanisms include the state-of-the-art aes-256 encryption engine, unique device ID code, and hardware random number generator (TRNG).These security features enable developers to meet the latest network security challenges.

Stmicroelectronics has divided the planned 152 products into three product lines, with more than 100 currently on sale: an entry-level 32-pin package, a high-performance product line, and a high-resolution product line of up to 107 fast input/output pins.STM32G431K6U6 USES 32-pin QFN32 package and on-chip flash memory capacity is 32KB.

More technical information:

MCU architecture

STM32G4 series are based on ST's existing high performance and high energy efficiency innovation technologies, for example, ART Accelerator and ccm-sram Routine Booster have improved the dynamic and static storage performance of memory-cache respectively, ensuring the overall performance and real-time performance of the application and the power consumption within the energy efficiency budget.

ST's new hardware Math Accelerator improves the performance of the chip again, introducing filter-math Accelerator(FMAC) Filter algorithm Accelerator and CORDIC special engine.New hardware accelerators can speed up algorithms such as rotation and vector trigonometry in motor control applications, as well as general logarithmic, hyperbolic and exponential functions, signal conditioning IIR/FIR filtering algorithms or digital power 3p / 3z controllers, and vector functions such as convolution and correlation functions.STM32G4 series is based on a 170MHz Arm cortex-m4 high-speed kernel with support functions of floating point unit and DSP extended instruction set. Excellent performance test results of 213DMIPS and 550 CoreMark are obtained.

From advanced process technologies and system architecture functions to advanced peripheral sleep/wake management functions, energy-saving innovation technologies are everywhere.Other important new features include:

· a high-resolution timer, with 12 independent channels, each channel has a resolution of 184ps, and self-compensation functions of temperature drift and voltage drift

· up to 25 advanced analog peripherals:

· up to 5 4 million times/s 12-bit ADC, with hardware oversampling function, can achieve 16-bit resolution

· up to 6 high speed and high gain bandwidth operational amplifiers, internal 1% gain setting

· up to 7 15 million times/s 12-bit digital-to-analog converters (DAC)

· up to 7 comparators with propagation delay of 16.7ns

· can-fd industrial communication technology, the payload bit rate is 8 times that of standard CAN

· operating mode power consumption is less than 165 mua/MHz, extending battery life

· on-chip RAM with larger capacity, up to 128KB, with parity checking function

· flash memory capacity up to 512KB with error check function (ECC)

· increased flexibility in DMA and external interrupts

· to optimize digital or analog functions, it is divided into three product series: basic series, enhanced series and high resolution series

As a result, the new G4 series complements the existing STM32F3 series.The G4 offers three times the performance of the F3, a maximum operating temperature of 125°C, and dual-area storage supports real-time firmware upgrades, including the addition of new packages such as LQFP80 and LQFP128.STM32G4 is very robust and resistant to electrical interference, especially fast transient pulse (FTB) tolerance up to level 5, which means that the G4 can actually withstand transient voltages above 4kV (IEC 61000-4-4) on the device.

Extended ecosystem

In order to assist application development, the development ecosystem of STM32 adds Nucleo development board (nucleo-g474re and nucleo-g431rb) supporting STM32G4 MCU with high cost performance, complete evaluation board (stm32g474e-eval and stm32g484e-eval with onboard encryption accelerator), and STM32CubeG4 software package.In addition, there is a set of Nucleo motor control special development board (p-nucleo-ihm03) and software development suite (x-cube -MCSDK v5.4).Online motor control tool st-mc-suite helps users navigate the ecosystem, discover and organize resources needed for project development.

The new G4 exploration suite, which will be available in the third quarter of 2019, will take full advantage of STM32 G4's digital power and motor control technology.