Added high quality user interface design software for microcontrollers

     By providing free graphical user interface design software to help developers create rich features, smooth graphics, rich colors, and excellent user experience, STMicroelectronics, a leading global semiconductor supplier across multiple electronic applications, is expanding the appeal of the STM32 family of microcontrollers (MCUS) to developers of iot products and other smart devices.

     The STM32 is the most popular Arm Cortex® microcontroller in the world. There are more than 800 microcontrollers in the STM32 product family. To simplify product development and speed time to market, STM32 also comes with a robust development ecosystem that includes development tools, middleware, software libraries, sample code, and evaluation boards. After acquiring Draupner Graphics, the developer of TouchGFX, STMicroelectronics now provides this highly acclaimed GUI development software free of charge to STM32 MCU device manufacturers and distributors.

     Daniel Colonna, Marketing Director, MicroController Product Division, STMicroelectronics, said: "Many customers have successfully applied TouchGFX to new products based on STM32 microcontrollers, providing users with a smartphone-like graphical interface experience. By bringing the latest version to our STM32Cube ecosystem, free of royalties and royalties, and offering a 10-year supply guarantee, we are making this powerful, innovative solution easily accessible to developers around the world."

     TouchGFX works with the STM32 microcontroller and includes a C ++ software framework that allows user interface code to take up only 10KB of SRAM space and 20KB of flash memory space. TouchGFX maximizes the advanced graphics capabilities of the STM32 MCU's Chrom-ART Accelerator controller, and the rendering algorithm minimizes the number of pixels to be updated for better graphics performance and smoother animation with a low memory footprint and a low power budget. TouchGFX supports a user interface with 1,2,4,16 or 24 bits per pixel (bpp) color depth and can run with or without a real-time operating system (RTOS).

     The development kit's TouchGFX Designer tool supports simple mouse drag-and-drop operations, allowing users to quickly develop graphical interfaces and features automatic code generation and font, text, and image conversion.

     Fully integrated with the STM32Cube software package, TouchGFX works with the STM32CubeMX configuration tool and initialization code generator to create a unified project environment for seamless development of the GUI and main application. To help graphic design projects run smoothly, ST has added new features to the STM32CubeMX, including an enhanced MCU Finder to help screen for microcontrollers, a graphics performance evaluation calculator, and an emulator to show how the graphical interface will perform on target hardware.