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Graduate II
June 11, 2025
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Confused about "oscillator transconductance" term in STM32 documentation

  • June 11, 2025
  • 1 reply
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Hi, I was looking at the following paragraph, because I`m trying to select a good crystal for my application, the situation is that I know that one importat point to be aware is that "gain margin ratio" needs to be bigger than 5, so to obtain this "gain marging ratio" the following formula need to be applied (gainmargin = gm/gmcrit), here "gm" is the "oscillator transconductance" (value shown in the image), my question is that if this value is a property of the MCU itself (of course the part of the embedded oscillator), or this "oscillator transconductace" has to be with the crystal used in the test,  because of the "characterization results" that paragraph states.

As you can see in the paragraph the data was obtained in this way as the text states "All the information given in this paragraph is based on characterization results obtained with typical external components specified in Table 22 (inluding oscillator transconductance) "

 

So I`m confused because I know I have to obtain the data to calculate "gain marging" based on this datasheet but what if this data is deppended on a specific crystal that generates that "oscillator transconductace" I dont know if  is correct what I`m saying, please tell me If I`m misuderstanding all this, I`m newie in these topics, hope I`m clear in this post. Thanks. 

Aldo_Flores_Aguayo_0-1749678230300.png

 

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    Best answer by mƎALLEm

    Hello,

    The transductance is the characteristic of the Pierce oscillator inside the MCU. It depends also on the drive level settings in some products.

    Please refer to this article: How to select a compatible crystal and load capacitors for STM32 with layout guidelines

    And more details in the AN2867 "Guidelines for oscillator design on STM8AF/AL/S"

    1 reply

    mƎALLEmAnswer
    Technical Moderator
    June 11, 2025

    Hello,

    The transductance is the characteristic of the Pierce oscillator inside the MCU. It depends also on the drive level settings in some products.

    Please refer to this article: How to select a compatible crystal and load capacitors for STM32 with layout guidelines

    And more details in the AN2867 "Guidelines for oscillator design on STM8AF/AL/S"