ST's STM32H7P adds DSP and NPU blocks to H7 line
Image: STMicroelectronics
STMicroelectronics has introduced the STM32H7P microcontroller series, extending the STM32H7 family with two dedicated hardware accelerators alongside a 520MHz Arm Cortex-M7 core rated at 2773 CoreMark. The devices combine ST's Hardware Signal Processor (HSP) with a Neural-ART Neural Processing Unit (NPU), targeting digital power, motor control, condition monitoring and other real-time industrial applications.
The HSP is described by ST as a cost-optimised, energy-efficient accelerator for matrix, vector and digital signal processing operations, intended to offload such workloads from the Cortex-M7 and reduce the need for a separate external DSP. ST states that the HSP cuts Fast Fourier Transform execution time by up to five times compared with a software implementation running on the Cortex-M7 core.
The Neural-ART NPU delivers up to 85 GOPS. ST has quoted internal results for three of its own AI models run on the STM32H7P: an Arc Fault Circuit Interrupter model for solar-inverter safety inferring 40 times faster than a software equivalent, an anomaly-detection model running 20 times faster, and a battery-management-system model running 15 times faster. These figures are supplier claims from ST's own benchmarking rather than independently verified results.
Laurent Vera, STM32 Marketing Director at STMicroelectronics, said the series delivers 1.7 times the performance of alternative products on the market when combining the Cortex-M7 core with the two accelerators, a comparison also attributed to ST.
Memory and analogue peripherals
The STM32H7P uses larger Tightly Coupled Memories for faster instruction and data access, which ST says maximises performance in real-time control, signal processing and AI inference. The series offers up to 2MB of flash, which ST says is priced similarly to the previous 1MB STM32H7 series. Analogue peripherals, including ADC, DAC and comparators, along with timer blocks, are inherited from ST's STM32G5 mixed-signal series.
Operating conditions and software support
The STM32H7P is rated for operation up to 125°C ambient temperature and is included in ST's industrial longevity support programme. An exposed-pad LQFP package option is offered to improve thermal dissipation in high-temperature designs. Software support includes ST's Edge AI Suite, DSP enablement tools, the X-CUBE-MCSDK-2 motor-control software, and integration with the STM32Cube ecosystem, including the STM32CubeMX2 configurator and the HAL2 hardware abstraction layer.
ST states that the STM32H7P is sampling at OEMs now, with production planned for January 2027. Pricing is quoted from $4.43 for the 1MB flash variant in an LQFP100 package, for orders of 10,000 units. The NUCLEO-H7P5II evaluation board and STM32H7P5IDK Discovery kit are also planned for January 2027.
