Hands-On RTOS with Microcontrollers

The concept of an MCU family

Many silicon vendors have concepts of device families, and STMicroelectronics (STM) is no exception—datasheets are typically written for entire families of devices. The most notable differences between devices in an STM family are typically RAM/ROM and the package size. However, additional peripherals are added to more capable devices as well—for example, larger packages will start to include parallel RAM controllers. Devices with more RAM/ROM will include more capable timer peripherals, more comm peripherals, or domain-specific peripherals, such as cryptographic modules.

Moving between devices in a given device family should be easy to do, so it is advisable to start on one end of the family (high is usually ...