On 13th August, 2020, GigaDevice with GD32 MCU products participated in the Global MCU Technology and Application Summit held by Aspencore in Shanghai, China. The summit focuses on MCU technology, market development trends, market MCU demand, diversified application scenarios and new developments in the MCU industry.
IC Insights data shows that after two consecutive years of high growth, the global MCU market was expected to shrink by 6% in mid-2019. However, after 2019, the MCU market was expected to pick up, and the global market will reach 17.1 billion USD in 2020, bringing a year-on-year increase 3.2%, while MCU shipments will hit a record high of 28.9 billion pieces.
From 2008 to 2018, the average compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of the China’s MCU market was 7.2%, which was 4 times the growth rate of the global MCU market during the same period. In 2019, the China’s MCU market reached 3.7 billion USD. It is estimated that in 2020, China’s MCU market will exceed 3.8 billion USD, and the market growth rate will still lead the world. This shows the huge scale of China’s MCU market, and it still maintains a relatively high-speed growth even in the face of the general environment.
Eric Jin, GigaDevice’s product marketing director introduced GD32, the China’s MCU market leader, to the audience.
GD32 MCU: Broad but specialized development ideas
Last year, GigaDevice launched the first RISC-V general-purpose MCU, which attracted considerable attention worldwide and won the title of the best hardware product of the year at the international exhibition Embedded World 2020 in Nuremberg. At that time, Mr. Eric Jin, GigaDevice’s product marketing director, mentioned GigaDevice’s MCU “department store” strategy. At the round table of the MCU Technology and Application Summit, Eric Jin repeatedly mentioned that GigaDevice’s MCU “department store” on the one hand is increasing versatility and improving product coverage; on the other hand, it is focusing on vertical markets, while launching dedicated MCUs, based on market’s requirements for interfaces and computing power, such as the GD32FFPR and the GD32EPRT; creating a better service ecosystem.
The GD32 MCU series can cover all kinds of requirements from entry level to high-performance level with a big variety of cores
Reflecting the above-mentioned characteristics of “wide coverage”, GD32 MCU series cover all kinds of requirements from entry level to high-performance level, providing Arm Cortex-M3, M4, M23, M33 and RISC-V based MCU products. There are 27 products series with more than 360 models for selection. All product lines are compatible with each other, in term of hardware and software, including the Arm and RISC-V products. Additionally the code switching from Arm to RISC-V is seamless, and the upgrade and translation are very flexible.
GD32 MCU BLDC motor control solution
At the same time, we guarantee multiple production processes, multiple production lines and multiple packaging plants, such as the market leading foundries, which mainly include SMIC, UMC, and TSMC. On the side of packaging and testing we cooperate with several packaging and testing leaders, to provide multi-production line guarantee. In the case of MCU shortages or major changes, such as the pandemic period, we still guarantee supply sufficiency and flexibility. All the GD32 products can cover all the major application markets such as industrial control, energy control, security monitoring, home appliances, consumer electronics, medical health equipment, automotive peripherals and so on; Eric Jin said.
The fingerprint recognition GD32FFPR-START kit is shown in green
In regards to special application fields, GD32MCU family also has specific MCU products, such as those for fingerprint recognition (GD32FFPR), optical modules (GD32E232), printers (GD32EPRT) and other markets. In fact, these years there is a gradually increasing trend for specialized parts, especially in the high-performance field. A typical example, is GigaDevice’s latest MCU series, the GD32E5 series, which includes a core-independent multiplier/divider, DSP instructions set, Floating Point Unit (FPU) and a Trigonometric Math Unit (TMU), that could help to accelerate the mix-signal processing. All of them have a very valuable role in high-precision industrial control, SMPS, and other high performance applications.
GD32 continuously strengthen its complete development ecosystem
As for the “Ecosystem services”, GD32 MCU mainly expands and strengthens its development ecosystem. GD32 focuses on 6 sectors, including the official tools (full-function evaluation boards, starter kits, etc.), debugging and programming tools (such as those promoted by the cooperation with SEGGER and IAR Systems), embedded software, technical solutions, technical training (online training, etc.) and GD32 university programs (joint laboratories, electronic design competitions, etc.).
GD32 provides a rich and comprehensive support framework for the RISC-V development ecosystem
The rapid development of the open source RISC-V instruction set architecture ecosystem has emerged globally, becoming an important innovation topic in the semiconductor industry and for applications such as the Internet of Things and smart terminals. GD32 has an extensive and in-depth interaction with global MCU developers and lots of third-party partners to continue to grow the RISC-V MCU ecosystem.
Third-party partners and industry leaders like SEGGER and IAR Systems offer more IDE and tool options, including SEGGER J-link V10 debugging/programming tool and Embedded Studio, IAR I-Jet debug probe and IAR Embedded Workbench. Embedded operating systems including μC/OS II, FreeRTOS, RT-Thread, and LiteOS are also fully integrated and can provide connectivity with the cloud. All of these tools have greatly simplified the development of the RISC-V based MCU’s.
GD32 is more adapted to the user behavior of the new generation of engineers, help to bring their creativity and unlock the innovative potential of AIoT. At the summit, GD32 and its global partners brought multiple product solutions for applications ranging from AIoT, motor control, industrial Internet and other fields. The vibrant ecosystem has attracted many industry experts and engineers to the GigaDevice booth. The GD32 ecosystem combined with global partners’ solutions offers powerful resources which include a wide variety of operating systems (RTOS), graphical user interface (GUI), Integrated Development Environment (IDE), development kits, security components, cloud connection, information transmission, intelligent processing, and other AIoT application hotspots.