The latest STM32L496 microcontroller (MCU) from STMicroelectronics extends the unique fusion of ARM® Cortex® -M4F core performance and proprietary ultra-low-power technologies, adding larger memories, enhanced graphics support, extra peripherals, and increased power-saving flexibility.

Bigger on-chip RAM, now up to 320 Kbytes, complements the newly added ST Chrom-ART Accelerator™ graphics engine for smoother display performance in energy-conscious applications such as IoT devices and smart watches. There is also up to 1 Mbyte Flash, an extra CAN interface, a camera interface and crystal-less Full Speed (FS) USB OTG. A new high-pin-count UFBGA169 package option gives extra flexibility to exercise these new peripherals, which join the rich digital and smart analog features shared with the STM32L476/486.

Offering features unavailable in other ultra-low-power MCUs, the new STM32L4™ devices deliver both high core performance and outstanding ultra-low-power efficiency. The EEMBC®[1] CoreMark® score of 273 outperforms other ultra-low-power cores, while the ULPBench™ score of 217 confirms greater energy efficiency. Active-mode current of just 37µA/MHz enables longer runtime on small batteries and extends scope to create energy-neutral products powered from ambient sources.

ST has also extended the flexibility of the STM32L4 power architecture, giving developers the option to power the core from an external DC/DC converter for extra efficiency. The STM32L4 FlexPowerControl architecture includes a new shutdown mode for additional energy savings, alongside multiple independent core and peripheral supplies, and a separate VBAT domain with charging circuitry that gives flexibility to utilize or recharge battery energy. The rich selection of seven main STM32L4 low-power modes is also supported, with options such as retaining I/O levels and SRAM contents, each with several sub-modes that allow precision trimming of power consumption as application demand varies.

The new STM32L4 MCU lines arrive with extensive ecosystem support, including STM32Cube tools and software, two Nucleo-144 boards, and the STM32L496 Discovery Kit (STM32L496G-DISCO) with on-board audio/graphics features and Arduino, Pmod and STMod+™ connectivity support. The NUCLEO-L496ZG-P features an on-board DC/DC converter for powering the core directly, which allows developers to easily leverage the flexible power architecture in the most energy-conscious applications. The legacy-compatible NUCLEO-L496ZG is also available, and offers the same features as existing Nucleo-144 boards.

View the getting started with STM32L496G discovery kit video below

Features

• Ultra-low-power with FlexPowerControl
• Core: ARM® 32-bit Cortex®-M4 CPU with FPU, Adaptive real-time accelerator (ART Accelerator™) allowing 0-wait-state execution from Flash memory, frequency up to 80 MHz, MPU, 100 DMIPS and DSP instructions
• Performance benchmark
  • 1.25 DMIPS/MHz (Drystone 2.1)
  • 273.55 Coremark® (3.42 Coremark/MHz @ 80 MHz)
• Energy benchmark
  • 217 ULPBENCH™ score
• 16 x timers: 2 x 16-bit advanced motor-control, 2 x 32-bit and 5 x 16-bit general purpose, 2 x 16-bit basic, 2 x low-power 16-bit timers (available in Stop mode), 2 x watchdogs, SysTick timer
• RTC with HW calendar, alarms and calibration
• Up to 136 fast I/Os, most 5 V-tolerant, up to 14 I/Os with independent supply down to 1.08 V
• Dedicated Chrom-ART Accelerator™ for enhanced graphic content creation (DMA2D)
• 8- to 14-bit camera interface up to 32 MHz (black&white) or 10 MHz (color)
• Memories
  • Up to 1 MB Flash, 2 banks read-while-write, proprietary code readout protection
  • 320 KB of SRAM including 64 KB with hardware parity check
  • External memory interface for static memories supporting SRAM, PSRAM, NOR and NAND memories
  • Dual-flash Quad SPI memory interface
• Clock Sources
  • 4 to 48 MHz crystal oscillator
  • 32 kHz crystal oscillator for RTC (LSE)
  • Internal 16 MHz factory-trimmed RC (±1%)
  • Internal low-power 32 kHz RC (±5%)
  • Internal multispeed 100 kHz to 48 MHz oscillator, auto-trimmed by LSE (better than ±0.25 % accuracy)
  • Internal 48 MHz with clock recovery
  • 3 PLLs for system clock, USB, audio, ADC
• LCD 8 x 40 or 4 x 44 with step-up converter
• Up to 24 capacitive sensing channels: support touchkey, linear and rotary touch sensors
• 4x digital filters for sigma delta modulator
• Rich analog peripherals (independent supply)
  • 3 x 12-bit ADC 5 Msps, up to 16-bit with hardware oversampling, 200 µA/Msps
  • 2 x 12-bit DAC, low-power sample and hold
  • 2 x operational amplifiers with built-in PGA
  • 2 x ultra-low-power comparators
• 20 x communication interfaces
  • USB OTG 2.0 full-speed, LPM and BCD
  • 2 x SAIs (serial audio interface)
  • 4 x I2C FM+(1 Mbit/s), SMBus/PMBus
  • 5 x U(S)ARTs (ISO 7816, LIN, IrDA, modem)
  • 1 x LPUART
  • 3 x SPIs (4 x SPIs with the Quad SPI)
  • 2x CAN (2.0B Active) and SDMMC
  • SWPMI single wire protocol master I/F
  • IRTIM (Infrared interface)
• 14-channel DMA controller
• True random number generator
• CRC calculation unit, 96-bit unique ID
• Development support: serial wire debug (SWD), JTAG, Embedded Trace Macrocell™

Click here for more information or to buy from Anglia Live.

Click here to download the datasheet.

Anglia are offering customers a FREE evaluation kit for the STM32L496 Ultra-Low-Power Microcontroller from STMicroelectronics, please fill in the form below to register interest now.
 

Requesting....