STMicroelectronics is the world's fifth largest semiconductor company with net revenues of US$9.84 billion in 2008.
STMicroelectronics was created in 1987 by the merger of SGS Microelettronica of Italy and Thomson Semiconducteurs of France. Since its formation, ST has grown faster than the semiconductor industry as a whole and it has been one of the world's Top Five semiconductor suppliers since 2005.

The group totals over 50,000 employees, 16 advanced research and development units, 39 design and application centers, 15 main manufacturing sites and 78 sales offices in 36 countries.
Corporate Headquarters, as well as the headquarters for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, (EMEA) are in Geneva. The Company's U.S. Headquarters are in Carrollton (Texas); those for Asia-Pacific are based in Singapore and Japanese operations are headquartered in Tokyo. The “Greater China” region, which includes Hong Kong, China and Taiwan, is headquartered in Shanghai.

ST has a worldwide network of front-end (wafer fabrication) and back-end (assembly and test and packaging) plants. ST's principal wafer fabs are presently located in Agrate Brianza and Catania (Italy), Crolles, Rousset and Tours (France), and Singapore. The wafer fabs are complemented by highly efficient assembly and test facilities located in China, Malaysia, Malta, Morocco and Singapore.

ST aims to be the leader in multimedia convergence and power applications, offering one of the world's broadest product portfolios, including application-specific products containing a large proprietary IP (Intellectual Property) content and multi-segment products that range from discrete devices to high-performance microcontrollers, secure smart card chips and MEMS devices.

To maximize the benefit of scale that is becoming increasingly important in some semiconductor markets, ST completed the creation of two joint ventures in 2008. In the memory field, ST, Intel and Francisco Partners formed a new company, Numonyx, dedicated to providing non-volatile memory solutions, including NAND and NOR Flash memories as well as MCP (multi-chip package) memory solutions, for a wide variety of consumer and industrial applications. ST holds a 48% share in Numonyx.

ST has also been very active in the wireless arena. In mid 2008, ST and NXP combined their key wireless semiconductor operations in a joint venture, in which ST held 80%. In February 2009, ST acquired the minority stake from NXP and merged its wireless operations with Ericsson Mobile Platforms to create ST-Ericsson, a 50/50 joint venture focusing on semiconductors and platforms for mobile applications.

The STM32 family of 32-bit Flash Microcontrollers is based on the breakthrough ARM Cortex™-M3 core - a core specifically developed for embedded applications. The STM32 family benefits from the Cortex-M3 architectural enhancements including the Thumb-2 instruction set to deliver improved performance with better code density, significantly faster response to interrupts, all combined with industry leading power consumption.

The STM32 family is built to offer new degrees of freedom to MCU users. It offers a complete 32-bit product range that combines high-performance, real-time, low-power and low-voltage operation, while maintaining full integration and ease of development.

Compatibility of pin-assignments, peripherals and software across all STM32 devices is a core technical feature throughout this family of microcontrollers.