STM32H5E4/E5/F4/F5 with PLAY: boards availability?

waclawek.jan · ‎2026-02-27

A new STM32 sub-family (as part of the 'H5 family) came out. They have everything but the kitchen sink. As far as I can tell, 'H5E4 and 'H5E5 differ only in that the higher one has USB-HS with PHY (the 'H5Fx are crypto-enabled variants, as usually)

What's new is also the PLAY peripheral, which is a small programmable logic element, fully documented and configurable through registers. It's based around 16 simple logic elements (4-input LUT and an optional register), complete with an extensive input multiplexer matrix+filter, interconnected to a variety of peripherals (timers, DMA, ADC...) and also GPIO.

I wonder, if there's a Disco around...

JW

gbm · ‎2026-02-27

A really bad thing is that there is only one connection to DMA trigger, and no DMA requests (the trigger should probably serve as one).

My STM32 stuff on github - compact USB device stack and more: https://github.com/gbm-ii/gbmUSBdevice

unsigned_char_array · ‎2026-02-27

@mƎALLEm wrote:
@unsigned_char_array wrote:
Is there a simulator for this? I'd love to play with it without hardware.
I'd love to try to generate custom waveforms, hardware acceleration for certain operators, custom communication peripherals, etc.
That's not a true FPGA, CPLD or similar device. It's just a lookup table that you could construct some logic block with.

That's not what the documentation says. It says you can create finite state machines. So it needs to have state.
In the diagram I see the output looped back to input. Since output is looped back to input there is state.
Example: y[n] = !y[n-1] this should create a square wave at clk/2.
If you can feed GPIO inputs into it you can have it do manchester decoding. Etc.
If it can only do combinatorial logic and not sequential logic then the documentation is wrong and I will be disappointing.
If it can do logic like bitreversal of values that would also be interesting.
I know it's limited, but I'm curious to play with it.

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unsigned_char_array · ‎2026-02-27

@Andrew Neil wrote:
It seems fairly simple - not sure it would warrant a simulator ... ?

For unit tests. Feed it test signals and see if you get the desired output.
A simulator would not be hard to make, but if it already exists I wouldn't want to make one.

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mƎALLEm · ‎2026-02-27

@unsigned_char_array wrote:

it tests. Feed it test signals and see if you get the desired output.
A simulator would not be hard to make, but if it already exists I wouldn't want to make one.

If you mean by that a PC software simulator to run the tests before to go ahead with the implementation, to my knowledge, there is something to do that.. (I don't have the details right now)

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mƎALLEm · ‎2026-03-06

@Andrew Neil wrote:

I don't see the PLAY mentioned on the STM32H5E4/5F4 or STM32H5E5/5F5 pages ?..

Hello @Andrew Neil ,

This is feedback from the marketing regarding the question above:

Not all features are mentioned in the web page and also we are limited in columns in the table for features differences.

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Andrew Neil · ‎2026-03-06

Seems a bit of a lame excuse.

Also, PLAY doesn't appear in the Product Selectors for those parts.

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.
A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work.

mƎALLEm · ‎2026-03-06

The wiki Getting started with Programmable Logic ArraY (PLAY) is now released.

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Andrew Neil · ‎2026-03-07

The URL is still case-sensitive:

https://wiki.st.com/stm32mcu/wiki/Getting_started_with_Programmable_Logic_ArraY - works

https://wiki.st.com/stm32mcu/wiki/Getting_started_with_Programmable_Logic_Array (lowercase 'y' at the end) gives this:

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.
A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work.

LCE · ‎2026-03-24

Just checked Getting started with Programmable Logic ArraY (PLAY) - stm32mcu .

Then had a look at Logisim and watched the video (linked at the bottom of the "getting started" page) which showed me quite a lot of what and how PLAY can do:

https://youtu.be/l89M-4IaA8s?si=bZPp2lXlcI_nj29Z

Well, not bad for a start, still I'd like to have even more gates and FFs... :D

rhempel · ‎2026-03-25

This is awesome - I have an application where we are doing Manchester decoding and we have an entire (overpowered) CPLD to handle it. For simple logic with minimal state this PLAY peripheral is a real game-changer!

Can't wait to get my hands on a Nucleo board to see what it can do.