Exploring High-Performance MCU Products and Innovations from GD32

GigaDevice’s flagship high-performance GD32H7 series MCU will be officially launched soon, and this exhibition marks the debut of the official development kit for the GD32H7 series.

▲ GD32H7xxI-EVAL Board

The GD32H7 series provides 600MHz processing power with an Arm® Cortex®-M7 core, featuring advanced DSP and FPU. It includes Flash memory ranging from 1024KB to 3840KB and 1024KB SRAM, of which 512KB is tightly coupled memory for optimal processing efficiency. The GD32H7 integrates an LCD display and hardware graphics accelerator, significantly enhancing display quality while adding data security encryption features. It is suitable for digital signal processing, motor control, power, energy storage systems, audio and voice recognition, as well as many innovative application scenarios such as edge computing and AI.

In recent years, the new energy market has developed rapidly, with photovoltaic inverters combined with energy storage effectively managing energy conversion, synergizing and integrating with traditional energy sources. “Photovoltaic + Energy Storage” has become one of the most popular energy development forms worldwide.

The GD32F4 series high-performance MCUs, with their high clock frequency, large memory, high-precision timers, and high-speed ADCs, are widely used in core systems such as photovoltaic inverters, energy storage, and battery management. Additionally, the advanced peripheral interfaces, LCD display controllers, and graphics accelerators of GD32F4 support communication monitoring and human-machine interaction functionalities within new energy systems, helping equipment manufacturers rapidly achieve smart cloud connectivity for energy storage devices and seize market opportunities.

▲ Energy storage system BMS and communication monitoring module using GD32F4.

Switching power supplies are regulated power supplies that use high-frequency switching regulators to convert and adjust output, providing stable DC voltage output. Compared to traditional power supplies, digital power supplies have advantages such as high efficiency, low heat generation, and high power density.

At this exhibition, GD32 showcased two digital power supply solutions. The newly launched 500W digital power supply solution adopts a bridge PFC + half-bridge LLC topology: the PFC part is controlled by GD32E230C, inputting 220V AC and outputting 415V DC voltage; the LLC part is controlled by GD32E503R, inputting 415V DC voltage and outputting 24V DC voltage, using SHRTIMER to control the frequency variation of the LLC MOSFET for higher control accuracy, achieving a maximum efficiency of over 90%.

▲ GD32E230 + GD32E503 series PFC + LLC switching power supply solution.

The GD32E5 series high-performance MCUs utilize an Arm® Cortex®-M33 core with a built-in hardware multiplier/divider, providing a complete DSP instruction set and a single-precision floating-point unit, along with a hardware trigonometric function accelerator, enhancing computing capabilities for digital signal processing and switching power supply control, which can replace traditional DSPs and run MPPT algorithms to achieve maximum power point tracking for photovoltaic modules, as well as enabling data acquisition, communication monitoring, and rapid shutdown functionalities.

▲ GD32E503 series switching power supply solution.

The GD32E5 features a 90ps ultra-high precision timer (SHRTimer) and five independent counters, capable of generating five groups of two-channel complementary PWM control signals with dead-time, which can interact with other peripherals to produce high-frequency waveforms needed for sine wave inversion.

Human-machine interface (HMI) technology is rapidly evolving, connecting industrial control devices and home control platforms through serial ports, Ethernet, and CAN bus communication interfaces, allowing users to interact with terminal devices and home appliances in a smarter, easier, and more intuitive way.

The performance of the processor largely determines the overall performance of the HMI. The GD32F4 series MCUs, with their high performance, strong real-time capabilities, and large capacity features, have been adopted by many industrial and high-end consumer clients with HMI needs.

LVGL is a lightweight, open-source GUI design tool for embedded systems that can unleash unlimited potential when paired with GD32F470. The demo showcased on-site features a 7-inch LCD display with a resolution of 1024*600 pixels, demonstrating built-in component functionalities including buttons, labels, sliders, charts, keyboards, gauges, curves, and tables.

▲ GD32F470 LVGL GUI solution.

TARA Systems, established in 1990, is a software tools and services company providing solutions for millions of embedded systems in the consumer electronics, industrial, automotive, and mobile device sectors.

Embedded Wizard, a GUI technology under TARA Systems, enables the creation of high-performance graphical user interfaces even on resource-constrained MCU platforms. It offers advantages such as code optimization, rich functionality, scalability, and ease of development, effectively simplifying GUI development on GD32 MCUs and accelerating product development and time to market.

▲ Embedded Wizard GUI solution.

With the exponential growth of IoT and AI applications, emerging applications supporting voice control, facial and gesture recognition ML algorithms are continuously emerging, enriching the smart control and interaction methods of IoT devices.

The GD32W515 series is GigaDevice’s first wireless Wi-Fi MCU, designed based on the Cortex-M33 core, providing enhanced computing power and rich integrated resources for the AIoT field.

The IoT Wi-Fi module X115Z-RA jointly launched by GD32 and Eutecus has achieved Arm platform security architecture PSA Level 1, PSA Functional API certification, Wi-Fi Alliance certification, and RF FCC/CE compliance certification. With rich resources and basic peripherals of an MCU, the module is fully compatible with the GD32 MCU development environment and usage habits, allowing developers to easily build Wi-Fi connectivity solutions.

▲ GD32W515 series Wi-Fi module.

GigaDevice also offers users a set of integrated hardware solutions that combine brushless motors, stepper motors, and Wi-Fi communication, supporting voice control, smart networking, and OTA upgrades. This includes the GD32W515 series Wi-Fi MCU and the GD30DR8413 high-performance motor driver chip. Furthermore, by connecting to a voice recognition chip via UART, this solution supports local voice wake-up and recognition functions, suitable for a variety of application scenarios such as home appliances, central control panels, and gateways.

▲ GD32W515 fan control + local voice recognition solution.

GigaDevice plans to launch a dual-mode wireless MCU product with Wi-Fi 6 + BLE 5.2 within the year, combining the RISC-V core with mainstream wireless communication technologies, providing customers with competitive wireless connectivity through leading RF performance and rich integrated resources. Moreover, GigaDevice is continuously building a diverse wireless AIoT development and application ecosystem, offering various smart home connectivity solutions, including matter, to help customers accelerate their product development cycles.

GD32 MCUs support mainstream RTOS and cloud connectivity protocols, such as Amazon AWS cloud services, Azure RTOS, FreeRTOS, RT-Thread, and Zephyr. The corresponding product models of GD32 that are certified can be queried on the respective websites, and all codes can be downloaded for free from major open-source hosting sites.

The GD32E230 paired with the GD30WS8805 power management chip for TWS wireless earphone charging case solutions has been adopted and shipped in bulk by several industry brand customers.

▲ GD32E230 series TWS wireless earphone charging case solution.

The GD32L233 series MCU adopts industry-leading ultra-low power process technology and Arm® Cortex®-M23 core, paired with specially optimized low-power IP, featuring ultra-high GPIO multiplexing rates, making it ideal for applications such as industrial meters, small consumer electronics, portable medical devices, battery management systems, and data acquisition and transmission. The logistics cold chain monitoring device designed based on GD32L233 achieves data acquisition from temperature sensors through a 12-bit high-resolution ADC, using embedded security IP TRNG and CAU for data acquisition and transmission encryption verification, and provides multiple power-saving modes to extend the battery life of portable devices.

▲ Logistics cold chain solution using GD32L233.

GigaDevice will continue to drive the iteration of low-power MCU products from multiple aspects such as process, core, product architecture, analog IP, wake-up mechanisms, and energy-saving modes, equipping various packaging types based on product positioning, and becoming a continuous driving force for energy applications and energy efficiency optimization.

Motor control applications based on GD32 MCUs have already been commercialized in various terminals such as service robots, smart home appliances, refrigeration compressors, balance scooters, power tools, and industrial servo motors, widely empowering innovation across many industries.

GD32 products integrate independent multiplier/divider and other computation units, high-precision timers, and hardware accelerators, supporting three-phase six-way PWM waveforms, and also include rich analog peripherals such as performance ADCs, high-speed operational amplifiers, and comparators. Paired with GD32 team’s self-developed motor algorithms, precise control of magnetic field size and direction can be achieved, enabling “pixel-level” control. While driving motors, it can also drive displays to show real-time motor operating status and running parameters.

GigaDevice’s strong customer trust stems from the creation of a development ecosystem that tightly integrates products, users, and partners, allowing customers to choose tools that meet their needs and build solutions more suitable for their development, achieving controllable needs while effectively reducing R&D costs.

On one hand, GigaDevice continuously explores the potential of the GD32 series products, providing developers with software and hardware development kits as well as various self-developed solutions and algorithms. On the other hand, GD32 collaborates with global partner manufacturers to continuously offer users more integrated development environments (IDE), development kits (EVB), graphical user interfaces (GUI), security components, embedded AI, operating systems, and cloud connectivity solutions.

▲ Continuously strengthening cooperation with third-party ecosystem partners to support customer needs.

The well-known embedded tool manufacturer SEGGER from Germany has fully cooperated with GigaDevice, and all SEGGER tools now support the entire GD32 MCU product line, including Arm and RISC-V cores. For example, the Embedded Studio integrated development environment (IDE), the market-leading J-Link emulator, Ozone debugger, real-time operating system embOS, and libraries for communication, data storage, compression perception, and IoT.

The latest version of IAR Systems’ IAR Embedded Workbench® for Arm 9.32.1 fully supports GigaDevice’s GD32 series MCUs, using the I-jet emulation debugging tool as a JTAG hardware debugging emulator, which can be connected via USB to a Windows PC host to develop GD32 series MCUs in real-time using IAR Embedded Workbench.

Embeetle, a Belgian innovative microcontroller IDE supplier, has designed a new integrated development environment for embedded software development, providing users with a very intuitive experience. Embeetle now also supports GigaDevice’s Arm and RISC-V core-based MCUs, bringing the unique Embeetle IDE to GD32 MCU users, thus balancing processing capabilities between reducing power consumption and providing rich peripheral devices.

Global leading development and production tool supplier ProMik showcased a network security programming solution for GigaDevice’s GD32VF103 series MCUs. Through its MSP series programmer, ProMik can provide integrated debugging capabilities for GD32 MCUs, creating a secure production environment while being cost-effective. Additionally, global renowned development and production tool manufacturers such as P&E Micro and Algocraft showcased efficient and secure debugging download tools compatible with GD32 MCUs at the exhibition.

As Benjamin Franklin once said, “While we enjoy the great benefits brought by the inventions of others, we must also be willing to use our own inventions to serve others.” GigaDevice will further enrich the GD32 product matrix to meet differentiated market demands. At the same time, through strengthening self-developed solutions and ecosystem cooperation investments, it will continue to add core value to GD32, providing products and services to more quality customers worldwide.

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