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GigaDevice 32 bit ARM® Cortex® - microcontrollers Dipl.Ing. Zoltan Kiss Sales manager East Europe / Endrich Bauelemente Vertriebs GmbH Arm (Advanced Reduced Instruction Set Machine) is the industry’s leading microprocessor technology, offering the widest range of microprocessor cores to address the performance, power and cost requirements for almost all application markets. With more than 90 billion processors manufactured, the ARM technology is motor of the embedded computers’ World helping solutions to be born and businesses to operate. There are many licensed silicon vendors, software solution providers on this market, but a cost effective far-eastern licensed player with its own cost optimized solution helps to keep WorldWide prices on a reasonable lower level. GigaDevice, the well know manufacturer of Flash memories also takes a piece of the cake of ARM® Cortex®-M3 technology. Their GD32® family integrates features to simplify system design and provide customers wide range of comprehensive and superior cost effective MCU portfolios with proven technology and great innovation. In the first part of the series of articles we review the microcontroller architecture, later we show some examples based on evaluation board available for the device. GD32® is a new 32-bit high performance, low power consumption universal microcontroller family powered by the ARM® Cortex®-M3 or Cortex-M4 RISC cores, which targeted at various MCU application areas. GD32® family integrates features to simplify system design and provide customers wide range of comprehensive and superior cost effective MCU portfolios with proven technology and great innovation. Building on GigaDevice advanced patented gFlash memory technology and mass production experiences, it provides new form of MCUs which offers customer high functionality and quality. GD32® family includes entry line, performance line and connectivity line currently. The GigaDevice GD32™ family is well-suited for a wide range of applications, including industrial control, user interfaces, motor drives, power monitors and alarm systems, consumer and handheld equipment, solar photovoltaic controls, touch panels, PC peripherals and more. Different versions microcontrollers of GD32® family from entry to advanced performance level GD32® ARM Cortex-M3 Microcontrollers These microcontrollers are powered by the ARM® Cortex®-M3 RISC core, incorporating the 32-bit ARM® Cortex®-M3 processor core operating at 108 MHz max frequency with Flash accesses zero wait state to obtain maximum efficiency. The GD32F10x series of devices provide up to 3072 KB of on-chip flash memory. From the flash memory the read accesses can be performed 32 bits per cycle without any wait state. Thanks to the long experience of making flash chips, Gigadevice can benefit from this on its ARM microcontroller technology as well. Besides above mentioned features of flash handling, all of byte, half-word (16 bits) and word (32 bits) read accesses are supported. The flash memory can be programmed half-word (16 bits) or word (32 bits) at a time. Each page of the flash memory can be erased individually. The whole flash memory space - except information blocks - can be erased at a time as well. The GD32F10x series of devices contain up to 96 KB of on-chip SRAM. An extensive range of enhanced I/Os and peripherals connected to two APB buses. The device offers up to three 12-bit 1MSPS (1M samples per second) analog/digital converters, up to ten general-purpose 16-bit timers plus one PWM advanced timer, as well as standard and advanced communication interfaces: up to three SPIs, two I2Cs, five USARTs, an USB 2.0 OTG FS and two CANs. The device operates from a 2.6 to 3.6 V power supply and available in -40 to +85 °C temperature range GD32® series of MCUs also bring much advantage to the end-user. The max speed of GD32® MCU has increased 50% than the market competing products. Code execution efficiency of the same frequency has enhanced 30%-40%. Current consumption of the same frequency has reduced 20%-30%. These performances provide maximum capability and bandwidth options for various market requirements. The above features make the GD32® MCUs suitable for a wide range of applications. It is ideal for use in industrial control, user interface, motor drives, power monitor and alarm systems, consumer and handheld equipment, solar photovoltaic control, touch panel, PC peripherals and so on. Features · Flexible memory configurations, with up to 3024 KB on-chip Flash memory and up to 96 KB SRAM memory · Extensive range of enhanced I/Os and peripherals connected to two APB buses · Wide range of standard and advanced communication interfaces, including SPI, I2C, USART, USB 2.0 OTG FS and CAN · Up to three 12-bit 1Msps ADCs, up to ten general-purpose 16-bit timers, and one PWM advanced timer · Three power saving modes for maximum optimization between wakeup latency and energy consumption for low-power applications GD32 ARM Cortex-M4 Microcontrollers The GD32F4 device belongs to the performance line of GD32 MCU Family. It is a new 32-bit general-purpose microcontroller based on the ARM® Cortex®-M4 RISC core with best cost-performance ratio in terms of enhanced processing capacity, reduced power consumption and peripheral set. The Cortex®-M4 core features a Floating Point Unit (FPU) that accelerates single precision floating point math operations and supports all ARM® single precision instructions and data types. It implements a full set of DSP instructions to address digital signal control markets that demand an efficient, easy-to-use blend of control and signal processing capabilities. It also provides a Memory Protection Unit (MPU) and powerful trace technology for enhanced application security and advanced debug support. GD32F4 devices suitable for a wide range of interconnection and advanced applications, especially in areas such as industrial control, consumer and handheld equipment, embedded modules, human machine interface, security and alarm systems, graphic display, automotive navigation, drone, IoT and so on. Features · Flexible memory configurations, with up to 3024 KB on-chip Flash memory and up to 96 KB SRAM memory · Extensive range of enhanced I/Os and peripherals connected to two APB buses · Wide range of standard and advanced communication interfaces, including SPI, I2C, USART, USB 2.0 OTG FS and CAN · Up to three 12-bit 1Msps ADCs, up to ten general-purpose 16-bit timers, and one PWM advanced timer · Three power saving modes for maximum optimization between wakeup latency and energy consumption for low-power applications Development tools GD32® family integrates features to simplify system design and provide customers wide range of superior cost effective MCU portfolios with proven technology and great innovation. Keil development tools - available at http://www2.keil.com/gigadevice - provide comprehensive support for GigaDevice microcontroller devices in a complete development environment for creating, debugging and verifying embedded applications. Zoltan Kiss Sales manager - Eastern Europe e-mail: z.kiss@endrich.com