On May 13, 2025, the “15th Songshan Lake China IC Innovation Summit Forum” themed “Embodied Intelligent Robots” was officially held in Dongguan Songshan Lake, hosted by Chipone Technology. At this forum, Mr. Lu Pengsheng, Senior Manager of the Real-Time Control Product Line at Zhuhai Jihai Semiconductor, introduced the high-performance, high-safety real-time control MCU/DSP aimed at embodied robots—the G32R501.
As robots evolve from traditional industrial fields to broader areas such as healthcare and agriculture, they pose greater challenges to the entire robot control system. Lu Pengsheng believes that the most critical challenges to address are high burst, high dynamics, high precision, and high safety:
1. High Burst: The ability to run complex control strategies and algorithms to handle instantaneous high power output;
2. High Dynamics: The entire control system needs to quickly adjust actions and postures to meet rapidly changing scenarios and control tasks;
3. High Precision: The robot must support high-precision perception and control to complete fine tasks with minimal errors;
4. Safety: Support for fault diagnosis and safety protection mechanisms to ensure safe and stable operation in complex environments.
In response to the new demands of robot control systems, Jihai Semiconductor has also launched the first real-time control MCU G32R501 based on the Arm Cortex-M52 dual-core architecture. Lu Pengsheng stated, “First, robots need a high-performance brain, so this chip has 2 big brains + 2 small brains; second, for high-precision perception, the MCU must support high-precision sensing, not only equipped with high-precision ADCs but also high-precision DACs; it must also have components for control, output, and safety.”
Specifically, this MCU adopts advanced 40nm eFlash technology, featuring a 250MHz main frequency Cortex-M52 dual-core architecture, supporting Arm Helium™ technology. By supporting a customizable data path CDE interface, it can expand Jihai’s independently developed Zidian mathematical instruction extension unit, significantly reducing mathematical computation time and lowering CPU access latency, thereby enhancing overall system real-time performance and intelligence. In terms of real-time performance and edge AI performance, single-core performance is improved by 2-2.5 times compared to competitors.
The G32R501 also boasts sensitive signal acquisition capabilities, equipped with a 3.45Msps 12-bit ADC, high-resolution capture CAP, and enhanced QEP modules, enabling high-precision signal perception and acquisition to meet the robot’s need for rapid and accurate environmental signal capture.
In terms of control output, the G32R501 integrates a rich set of high-performance sensing and control peripherals along with a flexible peripheral interconnection system, including high-precision PWM with 150ps resolution, flexible programmable logic units, and high-precision DAC comparators, allowing precise control of actuator actions and postures, ensuring stable operation of robots in complex environments.
Regarding safety, the G32R501 supports multiple safety enhancement features such as code security protection and lost clock detection circuits, meeting the IEC 61508 SIL2 hardware standard. Combined with software diagnostics and STL libraries, the system-level functional safety can reach CL3 level. Additionally, this chip is built on an automotive-grade industrial platform and has passed AEC-Q100 Grade 1 certification, supporting a working temperature range of -40℃ to 125℃, efficiently meeting the high-performance, high-integration, high-safety, and high-reliability requirements of the mid-to-high-end application market.
Lu Pengsheng emphasized that evaluating the performance of a real-time MCU should not only consider its CPU core architecture, main frequency, ADC, and other data but also assess the real-time performance across the entire link from sampling to algorithm implementation and control. This requires a comprehensive evaluation of the relative cycle count needed from sampling to control completion.
According to the closed-loop performance test data released by Jihai for the G32R501 (based on TI C2000 standards and test codes), the G32R501 can achieve equivalent operational efficiency compared to TI C2000. Considering that the Cortex-M52 has a higher main frequency than typical MCUs, the acceleration performance will also be higher.
To better assist customers in developing solutions, Jihai also provides near-production-level reference designs, which are bus-type high-voltage servo controllers. Jihai has also developed corresponding six-axis robotic arms. Performance testing comparisons show that upgrading from the original solution to the G32R501 can achieve a 90% inertia ratio, significantly improving over the original solution; at high speeds of 3000rpm, the speed fluctuation is also better than the original solution; the overall system’s limit frequency has achieved a 1.3 times improvement; the entire time computation for completing the servo control budget has been reduced from 40 seconds to 17 microseconds. Both precision and performance have shown significant improvements compared to the original solution. Additionally, the G32R501 can achieve a single-core current loop of 0.76 microseconds, which is better than the TI C2000 series.
Since 2018, Jihai has established good cooperation with many leading industrial customers. As of now, Jihai Semiconductor’s products are widely used in robot control units, including real-time control DSP MCU series and SoCs dedicated to motors. In the encoder sector, Jihai holds a very high market share in the industrial encoder market, and currently, Jihai also has decoder chips for encoders; for visual perception systems, Jihai has ultrasonic radar chips that have not only achieved mass production in vehicles but have also established cooperation with leading robot customers.
To better serve customers, Jihai Semiconductor not only provides high-performance chip products but also creates a one-stop motor system solution of “chip + algorithm + reference design.” For different types of motors and application scenarios, such as BLDC, PMSM, stepper motors, etc., it offers a rich variety of control methods and algorithm support to meet the diverse needs of robots in fields such as robotic arms, robot joints, and industrial manipulators.
Finally, Lu Pengsheng also revealed two upcoming new products from Jihai: one is the APM32F427 industrial-grade high-performance MCU, which achieves computation and real-time control performance on par with leading domestic and international levels; the second is the first domestic encoder decoding dedicated MCU G32R430, which features a very high-precision ADC.
About Jihai Semiconductor
Jihai Semiconductor is a subsidiary of Nandstar, established in 2004, primarily serving its parent company. Initially focused on encryption ASICs, it released the first domestically produced multi-core encryption SoC chip for printers in 2012. Subsequently, it expanded its business into the MCU field and successfully entered the industrial and automotive markets. Currently, Jihai has six major chip R&D centers, multiple R&D cooperation bases, and a research team of over 600 people. As of December 2024, Jihai has applied for more than 1500 intellectual property rights, with over 1200 granted authorizations.
Editor: Xinzhi News – Langke Jian
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