“STMicroelectronics will continue to maintain its developer-centric strategy and support developers to implement new technologies through new products in edge AI, wireless connectivity, and security in the AI and IoT fields that are driving innovation across industries.”

STMicroelectronics held a press conference on the 20th and introduced its 2025 STM32 market strategy and new products.

Director Kyung-Hwa Choi introduced the STM32 market strategy for 2025.

Director Choi Kyung-hwa said that the intelligent objects market has been growing rapidly in recent years due to the advancement of AI and IoT technologies, and that technological elements that allow various devices to be connected more safely and efficiently are playing an important role.

He also said that as the AI market accelerates, companies are strengthening their developer-centered strategies, and that ST has enabled developers to unleash their creativity through STM32 and has built a developer ecosystem through an ecosystem called STM32 Cube.

By 2024, more than 1.3 million developers will use STM32 The cube was utilized, which is a 30% increase over the previous year.

Director Kyung-Hwa Choi predicted that more than 1.5 million users will download the STM32 Cube by 2025.

STM32 currently has five main product lines, with more than 3,000 products available on the market.

In particular, the high-performance line supports neural networks, while the ultra-low-power line is suitable for wearable devices.

This strategy has allowed STM32 to maintain its strong competitiveness in the general-purpose MCU market, ranking first for three consecutive years.

By 2030, more than 60% of MCUs are expected to move to fine processes, and ST is actively responding to this market change.

Today, STM32 has established itself as a standard MCU in the industry.

According to customer surveys, more than 80% of customers are satisfied with the product, and more than 100,000 companies are using STM32.

Director Kyung-Hwa Choi said that ST will continue to maintain a developer-centered strategy and plans to strengthen market competitiveness through various support and promotions, and that the goal is to increase the growth rate of the MCU market by 1.5 times by 2027.

■ STM32N6, AI function implemented even at MCU level, can be used in low-power, small embedded systems


Next, Manager Moon Hyun-soo went to STM32N6. Introduced about.

The STM32N6 is equipped with ST's self-developed neural network accelerator (NPU) and is designed to efficiently process AI models instead of conventional CPUs.

In particular, existing AI systems required hardware higher than MPU level to provide functions such as pose inference, object detection, and hand landmark recognition that require complex calculations.

On the other hand, the STM32N6 is optimized to perform these AI functions even on small MCUs, opening up possibilities for use in low-power, small embedded systems.

ST has succeeded in improving performance by performing calculations on the NPU instead of the CPU through the STM32N6.

This product features the ST Neural Arts Accelerator with a performance of 600GOPS (60 billion operations per second), and supports optimized AI processing together with the Cortex-M55 CPU and DSP computational accelerator.

Additionally, it provides 4.2MB SRAM and a high-speed external memory interface to enable fast processing of AI models.

The STM32N6 supports computer vision and video streaming functions that were difficult to achieve with existing MCUs.

It has a built-in MIPI CSI-2 standard camera interface, enabling high-resolution image processing, and can also be used for machine vision applications through the image signal processing (ISP) function.

In particular, it supports H.264 encoder, which enables web streaming, USB webcam, and network-based video transmission.

Security has also been strengthened. The STM32N6 uses ARM TrustZone-based security architecture to provide hardware-level protection and improves neural network computation performance by 600x compared to existing STM32 H7 MCUs.

It is expected to be utilized in various fields such as industrial and consumer electronics as well as drones, smart homes, medical devices, and automobiles.

ST has also built an ecosystem for AI development. It provides the STM32 Cube AI platform for STM32N6, and supports converting models learned in TensorFlow, Keras, PyTorch, etc. to run on the MCU.

In addition, pre-trained AI models and various example codes are provided to developers to enable them to easily implement AI applications.

The STM32N6 enables high-performance AI processing on low-power MCUs and is expected to play an important role in the future AI and IoT industries.

■ STM32WBA6, Leading Wireless Connectivity Innovation


STM32WBA6 was announced by Vice President Lee Jun-ho.

The newly announced STM32WBA6 is attracting attention as a next-generation wireless MCU.

This product supports the latest wireless technologies such as Bluetooth LE, Zigbee, Thread, and Meter on a single chip, and is also capable of long-distance communication with an output of up to 10dBm.

In particular, the Bluetooth LE Audio function has improved battery efficiency and latency compared to existing technologies, and the Oracast function enables audio transmission from one source to multiple devices, making it useful for airport announcements and simultaneous interpretation at conferences.

ST has obtained PSA Level 3 and SESIP Level 3 certifications for enhanced security, and can also respond to European RED regulations and the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark.

This prevents product duplication.We are strengthening our security and data privacy protections and preparing for increasingly stringent security regulations in the future.

The developer support environment is also strong. The STM32 Cube development ecosystem provides a variety of software and tools for free use, and the dual-bank flash memory allows for uninterrupted operation even during OTA (over-the-air) updates.

It also supports up to 86 GPIOs, enabling designs optimized for industrial and smart home applications.

■ STM32U3, ultra-low power, high energy efficiency


STM32U3 was announced by Vice President Kim Du-hyung.

The STM32U3 is designed using the latest near threshold CMOS technology to minimize current consumption during operation and dramatically extend battery life.

In fact, it provides seven times longer battery life than existing MCUs, and in gas metering devices, it can maintain the same 10-20 year lifespan while reducing battery size.

GPS trackers show twice the energy efficiency compared to existing products.

It also stands out for its powerful security features. The STM32U3 is equipped with security hardware accelerators such as PKA and AES to strengthen the protection of sensitive data, and applies DPA resistance technology to defend against side-channel attacks.

It also meets PSA Level 3 and SESIP Level 3 certification criteria.

It supports development of various applications through the STM32 Cube development environment, and implements fast data processing speed by embedding dual bank flash (1MB) and 256KB RAM.

The STM32U3 is an ultra-low-power, high-security MCU that is expected to drive innovation in a variety of fields including smart devices, IoT, medical devices, and industrial automation.