GigaDevice Embraces Arm Again with Its Performance-Centric Cortex-M33 GD32F5 Microcontrollers
Moving away from its recent RISC-V launches, GigaDevice's latest microcontroller is the 200MHz Cortex-M33-powered GD32F5 series.
Chinese embedded electronics specialist GigaDevice has announced a new arm Cortex-M33F microcontroller range aimed firmly at high-performance applications: the GD32F5 family, which includes more storage space than the company's previous offerings and a clock speed up to 200MHz.
"The GD32F5 series high-performance MCUs [Microcontroller Units] offer significantly expanded storage space, excellent processing efficiency, and a wide array of interface options," the company says of its latest launch. "Compliant with the system-level IEC61508 SIL2 functional safety standard, they provide a comprehensive software and hardware security solution to meet the industrial market's demands for high reliability and security applications."
Using proprietary Arm Cortex-M33F cores, in a shift away from its recent release based around the free and open source RISC-V architecture, the GD32F5 offers a clock speed of up to 200MHz and a performance GigaDevice claims hits "up to" 3.31 CoreMarks/MHz. The chips can be specified with 1MB of static RAM (SRAM) and either 4.5MB or an impressive 7.5MB of on-chip flash storage — including a configurable 2MB area of zero wait-state program flash, with the rest used for data storage.
The chip family includes a range of peripherals including six I2C, six SPI, two I2S, and one SDIO buses, eight USART buses, and a USB 2.0 On-The-Go (OTG) interface that can be used in Full Speed and High Speed modes, along with two CAN FD buses and a single Ethernet interface. GigaDevice has confirmed two models at launch, across five package types: BGA176 and LQFP176/144/100/64, all of which support 1.71-3.6V supply voltages and have 5V-tolerant general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins.
The company has also confirmed a range of evaluation and "entry-level learning kits" featuring the chips, though at the time of writing had not confirmed pricing; the parts are sampling now, GigaDevice has confirmed, with mass production expected to take place in May. More information is available on the company's product page.