RS Components to host design engineer workshop

RS Components will host a free customer workshop at the Premier Inn, Old Park Lane, Trafford Centre, Manchester, 2 December 2008.

The one-day event is being held in conjunction with ST Microelectronics and Hitex.

Attendees will be introduced to the STM32 microcontroller's system architecture, including an overview of its peripheral set, and ARM's new Cortex-M3 Macrocell.

The STM32 device consumes 36mA, making it suited to battery-operated applications, operating from a 2V to 3.6V power supply drawing just 2uA in standby mode.

The Cortex-M3 is based on ARMv7-M architecture on a three-stage pipeline able to deliver 1.25 DMIPS/MHz.

It combines the Thumb2 instruction set with unaligned data and storage and atomic bit manipulation.

Each section of the workshop will be accompanied by hands-on exercises using the MDK-ARM toolset from Keil.

Engineers will move through the creation of a project to handling features, such as the Cortex interrupt structure, the STM32 DMA and peripherals.

More advanced topics, such as using a real-time operating system, will also be covered.

Examples will be executed using both simulation and hardware debugging techniques.

It is assumed that participants will have a basic understanding of microcontrollers and a working knowledge of the C programming language.

The Keil microcontroller development kit, the real view compiler and debugging tools will also be discussed with a view to software development via building a first project and debugger using software simulation, JTAG and the STM32 debug enhancements.

An in-depth understanding of the STM32 system architecture will be gained through a study of its bus structure, memory map and boot modes, clock tree and PLL, low-power modes and the DMA controller.

How to use the STM32 peripherals to maximum effect will also be demonstrated.

The event will conclude with ideas on harnessing the power of the STM32, the ST library, using a small footprint real-time operating system and how to add gigabytes of low cost storage.

Attendees must bring their own laptops as these will not be provided.

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