STMicroelectronics NV has announced the shipment of its one billionth STM8 8-bit microcontroller. The one billionth device was shipped to lighting-control manufacturer Lutron Electronics. Offering a combbination of performance and cost-effectiveness, the general-purpose STM8 family suits a wide range of industrial and home-appliance applications, as well as automotive, low-voltage, and battery-operated products via its high-performance 8-bit core and a state-of-the-art set of peripherals.
“With significant input from Lutron and others over time, ST has developed the STM8 to enable high integration by embedding non-volatile data memory and excellent analog performance across a wide voltage range from 1.65V to 5.5V,†said Daniel Colonna, Microcontrollers Marketing Director, STMicroelectronics. “The short, 5-year ramp to 1 billion devices, and Lutron’s continuing commitment and dedication to the microcontroller, demonstrate the value of the STM8 to our customers, the market, and ST.â€
With the industry’s continuing emphasis on reducing the overall system cost, the STM8 platform is an good performer. The microcontroller leverages a Harvard architecture with 16-bit index registers and stack pointer, a 16Mbyte linear address space, advanced addressing modes, and other features designed to optimally support C-programming to deliver leading-edge CPU performance in both speed and code density. The core reaches an average of 1.6 cycles per instruction with 20 MIPS of peak performance at 24MHz using a 3-stage pipeline.
Moreover, the STM8 platform offers on-chip Flash program memory sizes to 128K and real embedded EEPROM with a performance in endurance and retention comparable to external components. Technology options allow high-speed operation, as well as drastically reduced power consumption.