AN910 Datasheet, PDF (1/51 Pages) STMicroelectronics – ST7 AND ST9 PERFORMANCE BENCHMARKING

AN910
APPLICATION NOTE
ST7 AND ST9 PERFORMANCE BENCHMARKING
INTRODUCTION
STMicroelectronics has developed a set of test routines related to 8-bit and low-end 16-bit
microcontroller applications to evaluate computing performance and interrupt processing
performance of microcontroller cores. These routines have been implemented on ST7 and
ST9 Microcontroller Units (MCUs) as well as several MCUs available on the market.
The routines have been written in assembler language to optimize their implementation and
focus on core performance, without being dependent upon compiler code transformation.
For each test, the two parameters of interest are execution time and code size. Timings have
been either measured whenever possible, or theoretically calculated when there was no other
alternative. In most cases, programs have really run and execution times have actually been
measured, so that assembly sources should not contain implementation errors and results can
be considered as correct and reliable.
The results of this study point out the capability of the ST9+ to compete with 16-bit MCUs on
8-bit and low-end 16-bit applications and confirms its position of high-end 8/16-bit MCU. It
also confirms the ST7 as an outstanding 8-bit MCU.
The first four sections provide synthetical information:
1. Overview of the Test Routines
2. Overview of the MCU cores
3. Benchmark results
4. Result analysis
on page 2
on page 3
on page 4
on page 11
More detailed information is provided in the appendixes:
5. Description of MCU work environments
6. Complete numerical results
7. MCU Core architecture analysis
8. Description of the test routines
9. Measurement proceeding and calculation
on page 17
on page 21
on page 25
on page 43
on page 46
AN910/1104
Rev. 2.0
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