GigaDevice Unveils GD32V Series with RISC-V Core

GigaDevice unveils the GD32V series with RISC-V core, in a brand new 32bit general purpose microcontroller

Adopt the GD32V series 32-bit general purpose MCU and discover the RISC-V development world now!

GigaDevice Semiconductor, has officially launched the world’s first open source RISC-V based GD32V series 32-bit general-purpose MCU products. GigaDevice provides a complete tool chain support from MCU chips to software libraries and development boards; therefore, creating a strong RISC-V development ecosystem.

As the first product line of the GD32 MCU family based on the RISC-V core, the new GD32VF103 series RISC-V MCU is designed for mainstream development needs, providing a cost-effective and innovative choice, whilst entering the mainstream market with balanced processing performance and system resources. The new products are available in 14 models, including QFN36, LQFP48, LQFP64 and LQFP100, and are fully compatible with existing GD32 MCUs in software development and pin packaging. This unprecedented and innovative design accelerates the development cycle between GD32’s Arm® core and RISC-V core products, making product selection and code porting flexible and simple. The new products are specifically targeted for embedded applications ranging from industrial control, consumer electronics, emerging IOT, edge computing to artificial intelligence and deep learning.

Fully optimized RISC-V processor core

The GD32VF103 MCU series adopts the new Bumblebee processor core based on the open source RISC-V instruction set architecture. It is jointly developed by GigaDevice and China’s leading RISC-V processor core IP and solution manufacturer Nuclei System Technology, offering a commercial RISC-V processor core for IoT and ultra-low power applications.

The Bumblebee core uses a 32-bit RISC-V open source instruction set architecture and supports custom instructions to optimize interrupt handling. It is not only equipped with a 64-bit wide real-time timer, but also it can generate timer interrupts defined by the RISC-V standard, with support of dozens of external interrupt sources, while possessing 16 interrupt levels and priorities, interrupt nesting and fast vector interrupts processing mechanism. Furthermore, the low-power management unit can support two-levels of sleep mode. The core supports standard JTAG interfaces and RISC-V debug standards for hardware breakpoints and interactive debugging. Additionally, the Bumblebee core supports the RISC-V standard compilation tool chain, as well as Linux/Windows graphical integrated development environment.

Furthermore, the new MCUs have a variety of peripheral resources for a wide range of mainstream applications, including up to 3 USART, 2 UART, 3 SPI, 2 I2C, 2 I2S, 2 CAN2.0B, 1 USB 2.0 FS OTG and an External Bus Expansion Controller (EXMC). Among them, the newly designed I2C interface supports Fast Plus (Fm+) mode with frequencies up to 1 MHz (1Mb/s), which is two times faster than the previous speed. The SPI interface also supports four-wire system and more transmission modes, including the easy expansion to Quad SPI for high-speed NOR Flash accesses. Additionally, the built-in USB 2.0 FS OTG interface provides multiple modes such as Device, HOST, and OTG, while the External bus expansion controller (EXMC) is more convenient to connect to external memory such as NOR Flash and SRAM.

The new product integrates two 12-bit high-speed ADCs with sampling rates up to 2.6MSPS, provides up to 16 reusable channels, supports 16-bit hardware oversampling filtering and resolution configurability and it has two 12 Bit DAC. Up to 80% of GPIOs have a huge variety of optional features and support port remapping, which continues to meet the needs of mainstream development applications with flexible and rich connectivity.

GigaDevice GD32 MCU is a leader in China’s high-performance 32-bit general-purpose microcontroller market being the first to release China’s Arm® Cortex®-M3, Cortex®-M4, Cortex®-M23 and RISC-V core MCU product series. With over 300 million units shipped, more than 20,000 customers and 23 series of product lines with exceeding 330 part numbers for selection, GigaDevice can provide solutions for a broad set of applications in the embedded market.