Why is this Microcontroller so Underrated? STM32G030 - Cortex-M0+
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- čas přidán 1. 07. 2024
- The STM32G030 is a Cortex-M0+ Microcontroller from STMicroelectronics. It is built using a 90nm process, much better than the 180nm process of the popular STM32F series. How does it compare to other Arm based microcontrollers? What about its power usage? Let's find out!
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I'm using the G030C8T6 on my own board designs. It doesn't need a crystal for most use cases, because the internal RC clock has a tolerance of just +-1%. And it is available at JLCPCB for a really low price. Also only one VDD and VSS, which simplifies my designs a lot.
What programmer do you recommend for this processor?
@@orides5976
I'm using the Black Magic Probe because it provides also a serial interface. So I need only one USB cable for SWD programming/debugging and serial communication to the controller. I built the programmer myself, but there are many BMP variants available for sale. I'd recommend the Dronecode probe, because it has SWD, JTAG and serial connectors and also supports different target voltages.
I think that it could be fair to include STM32G4 uController board to the contestants. STM32G431 and 473 are beasts in terms of performance: 180 MHz, same process, Cortex-M4 core. I really think that they will outperform SMT32F411 in terms of raw power and may be W*h per task.
Yeah that's what I was thinking too. It would be interesting to compare the STM32G4 series vs the F411 black pill, since they are both Cortex M4 and I would guess the G4 will have the low power advantage.
Nice to see coverage of the STM32G0. I have designed several boards with this series, including G070 and G0B0 chips
I have no idea what any of this means but I'm fascinated by microcontrollers and hopefully one day I'll do something with a microcontroller
It all starts with blinking an LED. start there.
I've constructed almost 1 hundred microprocessor projects. My advice.... Start with arduino. As you gain more skill and experience, move on to ESP32 and the Visual Studio/Visual Micro development environment. Skip all the STM processors and the pi pico w. Price wise, they can't compare. Arduino is easy to learn and implement, ESP32 has more functionality than the STM processors (with a few exceptions) and all the power you'll need.
@@johntoe6127 Thanks for the advice!
Personally, I disagree with @John Toe about skipping the Pico boards. They're powerful, cheap and are extremely well documented with a massive community behind the boards, much more than the ESP32 chips, so I can wholeheartedly recommend them. I have some advice on starting out, but I don't know what your current knowledge levels are.
No you wont, if you could, you would not have commented here
"why is this microcontroller so underrated?" probably the 030 code - that indicated to me that it was a much lower grade device, like the other 030 coded STM's - so thanks for bringing this to my attention. 16 channels into a 2Msps ADC with hardware oversampling to 16-bit accuracy is not to be sneezed at, although not having USB device capability is a bit of a drawback - could make very good data aquisition for an RPi via serial though.
Oh Gary explains first thing in the morning. You got to love it.
Gary, that covers every scenario for use cases on these MCUs. Nailed it. Well done and many thanks!
The cube programmer is built in to the cube ide too, so you just need to hit a button and it uploads it, it also lets you debug it through the ide which is very useful with features like breakpoints, viewing variables, live viewing variables and you can see the state of the registers too.
Thanks for the video. Very informative! ~
The standard processor will always be stm32 f103 because it used in st-link so every time they sell a demo board of the other ones they sell a stm32f103
I personally just LOVE G0 series: cheap, fairly powerful (64 megs!), 8 timers!, 12-bit ADC, very energy efficient (about the same as STM32 L serie)
And not to forget the internal RC oscillator with +-1% tolerance.
@@andreasschmitt2307 I wasn't aware of it :)
@@rmatveev
That's the main reason for me to use it on my own designs, because I don't need the crystal. You could just attach a battery on Vdd and Vss and this thing starts up with a stable 64Mhz PLL clock. No need to attach anything on the other pins, ST redesigned the port management really well. It would be perfect for the hobby developer, but the downside is the software. GCC for the M0+ is quite buggy, especially for C++, and the available frameworks have many problems. Also no EEPROM...
@@andreasschmitt2307 Yeees, lack of EEPROM is a huge disadvantage of STM32 series (some STM32L equipped with EEPROM as I can remember)
@@rmatveev
I think this is because ST also sells I²C EEPROM devices :-)
The thing is when the chips are smaller you get a couple of manufacturing benefits; you more chips from a wafer and fewer of them are broken.
I found it on my touch display for the printer, it was used to handle the touch screen, brightness knob and orientation switch, I searched for it and that's how I found about its price.
46c and 10 off and 32c and 1000 off, incredibly cheap, even during silicon shortage.
Shame though they don't have it in some smaller QFN package.
Good info, thanks.
just ported the TinyUSB lib (device) to the stm32g0b1
No wonder a particular microcontroller, as good as it can be, to be burried among the zillions available on the market nowadays with as many prototyping boards.
Cool video. I tend to use either the lowest end parts like the F030 or the higher end stuff with FP, as appropriate. I never seen to settle on the middle ground.
GD has a 3x0 series (GD32F330 and GD32F350), which are basically a mid-range CPU (M4F), more RAM and ROM, coupled with exactly G030's peripheral and pinout, all for some $0.7 (GD32F350G8U6, the part that I use the most).
@@bskull3232 Thanks for the heads-up on that part. Cheap and feature-rich is good!
@@bskull3232 they are a lot more expensive compared to the g030
Nice overview! Personally I'm super excited about the even newer STM32C0xx series, even smaller and has an awesome sop8 package!
The G0 is also available in a SO8 package.
A price comparison would have been nice, and also a test on Platform IO. Thanks for sharing 👍🏼
Platformio works nicely, but at the moment you have to provide your own board description file. I'm using platformio with libopencm3 framework. There are quite a few bugs in gcc and libopencm3, especially if you're programming in C++.
It certainly sounds like a good candidate for projects involving battery, solar or energy harvesting to power them, and this is something that is becoming increasingly a requirement.
You don't necessarily need STM32CubeProgrammer, (although it's required if you need to unlock memory protection), openocd can handle firmware upload to the board, even if you're not debugging
There is always he 'Horses for Courses' to consider and which one is the best depends upon what you want to do. One of the iritation I have with the plain common or garden Arduino Nano for instance is that it has more I/O than the programming space required for it (at least it seems that way) and for something only requiring a couple of I/O is daft. In the same way something which is non time critical, why have a fast processor. etc etc etc.
So the conclusion I have is any of them is the best.
These "minimum development boards" are okay and are cheap if you're on a very tight budget, but getting these boards from China takes FOREVER. So I usually buy $10 Nucleo32 board with the same chip from Mouser when needed. Nucleos have ST-Link included so you can just connected to the PC with a USB cable and comes with a TON of sample projects in CubeIDE.
The built in ST-Links are a great idea. It saves having a lot of gubbings all over the place, and has UART too. My complaint against the Nucleo-32 is that they label the pins with their Arduino equivalent (aargh!) whilst they don't label the Nucleo-64 at all. What I would like to see is a Pico RP2040 in the same size as a a Nucleo-32, with labelling, and an ST-Link equivalent. That would be really handy.
Important question: when nQueens test was run on Raspberry Pi Pico whether it utilized both cores or just one ?
Biqu actually use the g0 in their 'Mini e3 V3' 3DPrinter motherboard
It might be a really good choice for extreme low power operations.
I'd love to see it compared against the teensy 4
STM32F3s have built in serial bootloader, if you have a USB-to-serial (Arduino board can be used) you can program a STM32F3s (have all stm32 series bootloaders?)
Hello Gary, I am working with STM32G051K6U7 and there is no GPIO registers in System Viewer window while in debug mode. Did you encounter the same problem with STM32G030? I already raised this point with ST community, but no one answered this rather important question for me. I use uVision Keil IDE.
Hi, I just got the exact stm32g030 dev board and I can't find any schematics for this board. Do you have the schematic for this board ? Thanks
Hi Gary, are you going to add your Arduino nQueens code to your GitHub repository?
Maybe that little cortex m0 might be used when very little power is available, but for 3 more bucks u get much better ram and cpu freq... on the same stm32 family
I wonder if part of the reason the G0 board has such low current consumption is because the board doesn't contain a USB chip and associated circuitry (which must be drawing *something*). I like that they broke out the SWD pins all together for easy connection of an ST Link.
This could be a good choice for a project that's running on battery and doesn't need the extra processing power of an M3 or M4. Speaking of battery, do you know if it works on a single LiPo battery? (I see it uses an AMS1117, which needs about 4.5V to output 3.3V, so a LiPo would result in 2-3V output.)
The STM32L series of processors also seem to be very power efficient and capable. I don't know if there are any cheap boards that use them.
STM32 controllers want 1.8 to 3.6V. You'll need a regulator to run one from a lithium cell.
Hi Gary, can you please share some link to an example of N-Queens implementation for this microcontroller? I've searched for an example, but couldn't find any. Thank you!
Any cleanly code C implementation will work. Here is a good starting point: www.geeksforgeeks.org/n-queen-problem-backtracking-3/
@@GaryExplainsThank you!
Where did you find the info about the two UCPD interfaces? CubeIDE does not show anything about usb in this MCU...
Yeah, I think I made a mistake there, it seems that you need an STM32G0x1 to get the PD stuff.
That's funny, I ended up with exactly the opposite conclusion (NB: i dont mind the power consumption). F103 has many alternative sources (WCH / gigadevice , and they are ok), it is faster, it has usb, it is VERY well supported by any software under the sun. The G0 consumes less and has better pin management, it requires less voltage pins. It means you have more functions available on the same pin package. ( and for reference, the equivalent to the F103 is the G0Bx which has been completely unavailable for a year). So if you dont have a consumption constraint , the need for more ram & flash, and if you dont buy them in bulk from STM, why bother ? Personally, for hobbying, i'm sticking to F103 (or GD303 from gigadevice if i need more performances), it is more than good enough. BTW, 99.9% of the bluepill actually have 128kB of flash.
If you are after an alternative of G030, go check out GD32F3x0 (not 30x). F3x0 is basically GD's improved version of STM32G030, with increased flash, RAM and Cortex-M4F running at up to 108MHz. Peripheral wise, they are almost identical, with the GD being lack of cryptography accelerators. Unlike other GDs with larger flash, this smaller flash allows F3x0 to use a monolithic design -- the flash is built-in the logic chip, not as a separate chip copackaged together. This gives it much lower flash latency and bandwidth. You will have to squeeze everything within 128KB, though. I use GD32F330 in digital power converters, and at a fraction of the cost of GD32F303, it serves be more than good enough, plus the smaller package allows me to squeeze more watts out of the same form factor.
I couldn't find any schematics for those Devebox boards. They are as simple as possible, but still, that's a minus.
2:02 There is no PD USB-C in G30 series. Please read datasheet more carefully
Yeah, I think I made a mistake there, it seems that you need an STM32G0x1 to get the PD stuff.
Boy the industry has came a long way, I remember when a microcontroller could barely make it through the night on a 12V 7 Amp hour battery if it lost mains power. It's funny how quickly we take for granite, all the advancements in efficiency and computational power, additional built-in capabilities, all in such a small package.
Please just for fun run some comparisons with intel first generation of microcontroller, these kids don't know how good they got it now.
Even if you ran the MCU off a linear regulator (and you probably would have) it would have to consume an entire Amp to drain that battery in 7 hours... Would take more than a few 68HC11's for that to happen :D (sure throw in extra functionality IC and it helps a bit I suppose).
But yes I use nRF52832 at work and love them... Running of CR2032 coin cells, sure. Crossbar switching of most IO function, why not? Build-in easy to design PCBs for 2.4GHz radio supporting BLE, check!
I'm having trouble finding a schematic for this board. Does anybody have a schematic or helpful hint?
The G030 variant doesn't include the TRNG, AES accelerator, and all the memory protection etc. The G031 will have some of those options added in, but not USB. The G030 also only has 32k Flash.
No, it has up to 64k Flash.
@@vkp111 OK, 64k is now available in the 32p & 48p package, but all the other items I mentioned remain. The G030 range in fact has so many "gotchas", like the internal 16Mhz 1% OSC is no longer guaranteed to be 1%. Only USART 1 includes the FIFOs, prescaler, autobaud circuit etc. Still fantastic bang for your buck though.
Will there be a day when they make under 10nm microcontrollers? That would be something..
Probably not. Micros often need extended temperature range, and a wider process helps. Micros built with 90nm could work upto 150C
Not likely. Below 55nm, embedded flash has become exceedingly expensive. Yes, TSMC does offer STM32H7/F7 series 40nm with eFlash, but this is under very high order quantity, and years of business trust. Flash process becomes very finicky as process node shrinks, and without very good designing capability, the reliability could be a huge problem. There are other NVM technologies, such as FRAM/MRAM, but albeit the claims, they really suck at high frequencies -- they need to be erased to be read, so both read and write involves erasing. As you can imagine, power loss reliability can't be that good, and the erasure latency can make mere reading not so fast, not nearly a match to say, 22nm process where logic can easily run at gigahertz. Flash, just like many other analog IPs, don't shrink very well with lithography. That is why newer performance-oriented MCUs (most Chinese IOT chips) employ a dual-die design -- one 22nm logic die, and one 55nm flash die, where the main logic die does not have any eFlash at all, to tackle both cost and reliability issues.
usually you would use a powerful high speed APU and combine it with a microcontroller and connect them via usart, usb or something else. that is much easier to handle.
Excellent comparison, not over-simplified, not over-complicated... NICE! Funny that the one made in Europe sounds SO CHINESE "Jade Pebble".
This chip has two hardware USART's so why did you use Arduino SoftwareSerial library? Is it not possible to use the hardware USART's for some reason?
I used the Software Serial library for convenience. I just picked two pins and got it working. I am sure it will work with the hardware USARTs, but I don't have the time to test it that way.
STM32 chips nowadays much pricier than before. I remember looking on digikey chips like the STM32L412U8. Before the shortage, this chip would cost 5,24 $ CAD but now it's well above 7,50 and never in stock either. I have also checked some others like pic chips or atmega ones and the price differences aren't as striking and plus they are often in stock.
Why are you using soft serial? Doesn’t the chip have uart?
It does, but for convenience I just picked two pins and used software serial, I don't have the time to dig deeper.
i don't like them because of the clock setup hassle and the software stack needed. also most bords dont offer a bootloader
Go look at the EFM32 and other ARMV8+ cores
I don't think EFM32 cores are Armv8, they are still Cortex-M0+,M3,M4 etc.
@@GaryExplains EFM32PG22C200F64IM40
A very gross part number, but a $2 mcu with encryption and locked memory I’ve been using for a few products :) v8 is the future bby ❤️
Ah, I understand now, Cortex-M33, Armv8-m.
@@GaryExplains that’s okay :) not trying to brow bash or armchair engineer! I think you will find the v8 instruction set really fascinating! The v6+ set for M0 is neat and clean (I think there are barely 100 instructions) V7 added in DSP support and V8 added trust zone, encryption, and a lot of very useful memory protection features! With how cheap the V8 based cores are getting now, I wouldn’t be surprised if in a few years we stop seeing the use of the older M0+/really anything that predicates V8. The M23,33,and 55 are all replacements for the M0+,M3,M4,and M7 respectively:) I primarily wrote operating systems and other deep embedded systems, I’d love to chat sometime!
Yeah, I was at the launch event for Armv8-M and also for the Cortex-M33! I am currently reviewing the Thingy53 which has the nRF5340 (dual-core Cortex-M33, one at 128MHz, one at 64MHz).
7:37 RST pin is unusable on STlink clones. Wire is unnecessary.
what do you mean "true random number generator"? There is surely no such thing? (unless it somehow incorporates real life truly random events such as radioactive decay, which I somehow doubt this does :p )
The RNG peripheral is based on continuous analog noise that provides a random 32-bit value. There are details of how it works on the STM website.
All of these development tools usually don't work with ARM, like Raspberry Pi development station.
Are you sure? I just checked the availability of some STM32 development packages on my Raspi and they are there. I wouldn't use the STM32CubeIDE on the Raspi because it's based on Eclipse, which doesn't run really fast on my office desktop. But vscode with platformio should run.
I'm using Arch Linux on my Raspis, don't know if the tools are available for Raspberry Pi OS.
The Rust dev and programming tools targeting the stm32 chips work fine on ARM Linux boards.
Marketing and hype is how the orher lesser boards are more popular? hehe lol
Weird that Arduino uses Software Serial when the chip has 2 hardware serial ports. It's very inefficient to do that. I've made quite a few PCBs with the cheaper STM32 parts and they are really nice, with low power usage and a much better set of peripherals compared to the Atmel chips of the same price (actually better than much more expennsive Atmel parts). I do put UART to USB chips on my dev boards though!
It isn't necessarily that Arduino is using Software Serial, I did. To get a quick solution I used Software Serial and picked two convenient pins. I guess it would also work with hardware serial, but that would need a bit more investigation and I don't have the time.
There's so many reasons why arduino is garbage, at some point it might dawn on people but I'm not holding my breath.
What is it that you don't like about Arduino?
@@GaryExplains Where to start?
*SLOW* and very limited IDE (11th Gen Core i9, 64GB RAM, 1TB PCIe SSD here and it's still painful watching Arduino compile), no debug outside of serialprint, no simulation, single step, register or variable inspect (Arduino 2 has *finally* made inroads for debug after how many years?).
The idiotic way it opens a new instance if you want more than one project open.
For beginners:
The utter bin fire of the "support" forums where it's far more important to be seen to be knowledgeable than actually being helpful (ditto most hobbyist forums) etc. etc.
Examples which fail to work, compile etc. unless you know exactly which undocumented combination of IDE version and libraries were installed on the author's computer.
The good bits, it's made an awful lot of hardware *very* cheap and easily available, there's usually a library that is adequate for 'prove' hardware works before you develop code in a grown up IDE because someone else has often already messed about and written code (however badly) for whatever you're looking at.
stm32duino BSP definitely provides HardwareSerial for all of the STM32 USARTs, you can use that if the specific pins are available. It's just finicky to initialize the port and pins in custom ways, I spent a couple days fighting with 1.8 IDE (and mostly arm-none-eabi-gcc and board.h files) before I gave up and swapped the port numbers. CubeMX is more flexible, since we're relying on Java SE anyways. I wish there was a way to use stm32duino without the Arduino IDE, like in QtCreator baremetal + cmake perhaps?
Micro USB POWER ONLY ???? - no, thanks!
why?
@@gaborm4767 for board like this it is useful to have multiple power options so it should have at least a linear power regulator with at a minimum a diode based voltage selector. Also, in many cases I want to control it over serial and be able to update firmware directly over usb. It is just a very odd thing to have usb just for power. What if I only have 9 or 12V. Or run off a battery.
@@JohnJTraston Thanks. Well, there are pros and cons. Pro is you don't need to replace the whole board in case of power supply failure. Which boards do you prefer these days?
8k Ram. Ok thanks for watching
eh?
@@GaryExplains This explains why nobody use that board isn't. No need to dive deeper.
Really? 8K for a power efficient microcontroller is lots. The Arduino Mega2560 has only got 8K, that is a popular board. The Arduino Nano has only 05.K of memory. I don't think your assumption is right.
@@GaryExplains I guess for what you do is enough, I come from ESP32 world and anything "smart" needs a lot of RAM, I often use extra 4MB PSRAM on ESP32. Pi Pico is dirt cheap and has 264KB if you don't need WIFI. I like to write proper C programs and can't imagine to have 8KB.
Ah, I see, the old problem of thinking that everyone else has the same needs as you.
you cant beat the damn esp8266
Wrong specification...I hope this is just an honest mistake not to misguide other!!
Yes, sorry there was a mistake, I think with the USB stuff, no? Can I ask why would someone want to make a video that deliberately misguided people about the specification of a chip?
Gary. Please, please please stop using "Megahert" when taking about 1MHz. I know you know it's "one megahertz". Stop it!
Wait, I don't get it, does he mispronounce or rush it ? Care to provide a timestamp ?
You are comparing the new generation M0 to old generation M3 and M4. That makes no sense whatsoever and I see no value in doing this. It's akin to airing a feature by feature comparison between a modern minivan and a VW beetle. Where is the value? I couldn't watch this!
You don’t understand but it’s okay bc u had no say in the genetics that make u say the things u do.
I don't see the problem. There are so many factors to consider when choosing a processor these days. Did you instinctively know the power consumption of a blackpill would be so low compared to the M0 processors on the nQueens test? Sure, it's not comparing apples to apples, more comparing the strengths of different models.
@@BM-jy6cb Well, the M0 G is mostly just a cheap part, optimized for penny pinching at high volumes, while the *original* blue pill is now obsolete. That's why both have poor power characteristics and a smaller feature sets compared to some of the much more capable M4 processors, or even older ones. IMHO by the time you're finished paying for the circuit board, supporting components and headers, the M0 usually doesn't make any sense for hobbyist use. There are some truly excellent resources out there for comparing the many different MCU's which ST has to offer. I hope we'll see an explosion of new boards become available as the chip shortage situation slowly improves.