Posted on May 17, 2011 at 13:16Since we have been discussing road maps for the STM32, I thought I would put in my opinion of what should be added/changed. I have been using the STM32F103 devices now for about 6 months and really enjoy working with this CPU. ST has done an amazing job with the Cortex core.
My wish list is short, only 4 items. I am sure others will add their wish list items as well.
32-bit timers. I am constantly cascading the 16-bit timers to make 32-bit timers. It would just be nicer if the timers had the same functionality, but with a 32 bit timer core.
DMA Engine. I would like to see an improved circular buffer management feature added to the DMA engine. Something similar to how a programmer would manage a circular buffer in software. The addition of read and write pointers in the circular buffer would go a long way to improve using the DMA as a FIFO manager for a USART in random length serial communication situations.
RTC Sub-second interrupts. The RTC can wake-up the core on a 1 second interval. It would be nice if the RTC could be used to wake up the core at a faster rate. If I want to put the core into deep sleep mode (turning off the clock), but need to wake the CPU in X milliseconds, then I need to implement an external timer to generate the wake-up call. The RTC running on its own clock could do this function if it could generate a sub-second wake-up pulse.
Improve the Documentation. The Reference Manual and Data Sheet are good but not great. I constantly struggle to understand how a peripheral function works. Please strive to provide great documentation.
