ST'S SPEED-DEMON MCUS

摘要

STMicroelectronics is shipping the fastest Arm-based microcontrollers yet seen: dual-core speed demons whose Cortex-M7 main CPU can reach 480MHz. The new STM32H7 chips also have a Cortex-M4F coprocessor that can run at 240MHz. Additional features include up to 2MB of flash memory, up to 1MB of SRAM, numerous peripherals and I/Os (including Ethernet, USB, LCD, camera, and audio interfaces), secure boot, cryptography acceleration, and 2D graphics. These chips are among the most fully stuffed 32-bit MCUs on the market, yet they sprint like Usain Bolt. The new dual-core models extend the single-core STM32H7 line that began shipping in 2017 (see MPR 11/7/16, "ST's Mostly Modern Microcontroller"). Thanks to ST's own 40nm CMOS technology with embedded flash memory, their Cortex-M7 CPUs could operate at 400MHz. Design tweaks have pushed the maximum clock rate to 480MHz for both the existing single-core and new dual-core chips. Adding the 240MHz Cortex-M4F coprocessor makes the dual-core models even more powerful while retaining the same peripherals and I/O interfaces, as Figure 1 shows.