Pin compatible RISC-V microcontroller takes on ARM on power
Chinese chip maker GigaDevice Semiconductor has developed a 32bit microcontroller based around the open source RISC-V instruction set that takes on its own range of ARM-based devices on power consumption.
The family is pin compatible with its GD32 ARM-based microcontrollers but thas dynamic power consumption 50 percent and the standby power consumption 25 percent lower than the GD32 ARM Cortex-M3 device.
The GD32V, which GigaDevice says is the first RISC-V microcontroller. is based around the Bumblebee RISC-V core developed by GigaDevice and processor core IP developer Nuclei System Technology. The core has a two-stage variable-length pipeline microarchitecture with a streamlined dynamic branch predictor and instruction prefetch unit, while it incorporates a variety of low-power design methods including a single-cycle hardware multiplier, hardware divider and acceleration unit and a power management unit that supports two-levels of sleep mode. There is a 64bit timer and can generate timer interrupts defined by the RISC-V standard.
“GigaDevice is the first in the industry to launch 32bit general-purpose MCU products based on RISC-V architecture and continues to build and strengthen the RISC-V development ecosystem,” said Deng Yu, executive VP of GigaDevice, general manager of GigaDevice MCU business unit. “
The chip is powered by 2.6V-3.6V and the I/O ports can withstand 5V voltage level. It is equipped with a 16-bit advanced timer supporting three-phase PWM complementary outputs and Hall acquisition interface for vector control. Also, it has up to four 16-bit general-purpose timers, two 16-bit basic timers, and two multi-channel DMA controllers. The interrupt controller (ECLIC) provides up to 68 external interrupts and can be nested with 16 programmable priority levels to enhance the real-time performance of high-performance control.
In benchmarks the chip produces 153DMIPS at 108MHz with 360 CoreMark points, 15 percent higher than the M3. The family supports 16KB to 128KB of on-chip flash and 6KB to 32KB of SRAM cache, as well as GigaDevice’s patented gFlash technology that allows high-speed core accesses to flash in zero wait time to further reduce the power consumption.
Up to 80 percent of the general purpose GPIO ports support port remapping so that the pinout can be configured to a particular design.
A key factor is that GigaDevice and Nuclei provide a complete Eclipse-based tool chain support from MCU chips to software libraries and development boards. This allows the same software to be used on either RISC-V or ARM devices for embedded applications such as industrial control, consumer electronics, emerging IOT, edge computing as well as artificial intelligence and deep learning. This makes product selection and code porting flexible and simple, says Yu.
The RISC-V devices are available in 14 models, including QFN36, LQFP48, LQFP64 and LQFP100 packages and are fully compatible with existing GD32 MCUs in software development and pin packaging.
Development tools include include the GD32VF103V-EVAL full-featured evaluation board along with the GD32VF103R-START, GD32VF103C-START and GD32VF103T- TART entry-level learning boards, each one with a different chip package and number of pins. GigaDevice also provides the GD32VF103-BLDC motor control development board and GD-LINK debugging mass production tool.
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