STMicroelectronics to boost AI at the edge with new NPU-accelerated STM32 microcontrollers

STMicroelectronics to boost AI at the edge
with new NPU-accelerated STM32 microcontrollers

• New machine-learning capabilities make it possible to run computer vision, audio processing, sound analysis and more consumer and industrial applications at the edge
• STM32N6 MCU series is the most powerful in STM32 family, and first to feature proprietary Neural-ART Accelerator NPU, architected for embedded inference
• Combination of software and tools ecosystem continues to lower the barrier to entry for developers to take advantage of AI-accelerated performance for real-time operating systems
  
  

Geneva, Switzerland, December 10, 2024 – STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM), a global semiconductor leader serving customers across the spectrum of electronics applications, is making embedded artificial intelligence (AI) truly here-to-help with a new microcontroller series integrating, for the first time, accelerated machine-learning (ML) capabilities. This enables cost-sensitive, power-conscious consumer and industrial products to provide high-performance features leveraging computer vision, audio processing, sound analysis and other algorithms, until now beyond the capabilities of small embedded systems.

The STM32N6 microcontroller (MCU) series is ST’s most powerful to date, and the first to embed ST’s proprietary neural processing unit (NPU), the Neural-ART Accelerator, delivering 600 times more machine-learning performance than a high-end STM32 MCU today. The STM32N6 has been available to selected customers since October 2023 and is now ready to be offered in high volumes.

“We are on the verge of a significant transformation at the tiny edge. This transformation involves the increasing augmentation or replacement of our customers' workloads by AI models. Currently, these models are used for tasks such as segmentation, classification, and recognition. In the future, they will be applied to new applications yet to be developed,” said Remi El-Ouazzane, President, Microcontrollers, Digital ICs and RF Products Group (MDRF) at STMicroelectronics. “The STM32N6 is the first STM32 product to feature our Neural-ART Accelerator NPU. It will utilize a new release of our unique AI software ecosystem package. This marks the beginning of a long journey of AI hardware-accelerated STM32, which will enable innovations in applications and products in ways not possible with any other embedded processing solution.”