GigaDevice launches the New GD32E5 Series of MCU's, marking a new milestone for high-performance computing based on the Arm Cortex-M33 core.

Beijing, China – (July 28, 2020) – GigaDevice, an industry leading semiconductor supplier (stock number 603986), officially released the brand new GD32E5 series of high-performance microcontrollers based on the new Arm^® Cortex^®-M33 core. This new series of MCUs are manufactured using TSMC’s Low Power 40-nanometer (40nm) embedded flash memory process, helping to improve power efficiency and development costs. The new MCU series continue to expand the current portfolio, aimed for embedded systems. These are well suited for the development of high-precision industrial control as well as digital power supply, motor frequency conversion, measuring instruments, mixed signal processing and industrial / consumer control. The GD32E5 product portfolio includes 3 general-purpose series and 1 special-purpose series, 4 package types and 23 product models. The series is currently sampling and will officially move to mass production next month.

GD32E5 product series general-purpose MCUs utilizing the Cortex^®-M33 Core

New core and hardware accelerator improve processing performance

The GD32E5 series is based on the Cortex^®-M33 core from the latest Armv8-M architecture. System frequency supports up to 180MHz, includes a built-in hardware multiplier/divider, DSP instruction set and single-precision floating-point unit (FPU). It is also equipped with a new hardware trigonometric math unit (TMU) that supports vector, sine and cosine, exponent, square root, common logarithm and other mathematical trigonometric operations, reducing the burden on the CPU and improving the processing efficiency. These advance features will benefit advanced computing applications centered on digital signal processing. The new GD32E5 series provides the highest performance at 244DMIPS and its CoreMark^® test can reach 547 points. Compared with similar Cortex^®-M4 products in the market, the code execution efficiency under the same main system frequency is improved by 10%-20% and compared with similar Cortex^®-M23 products, the performance has been improved by more than 40%.

GD32E5 is equipped with 128KB to 512KB of Flash and 80KB to 128KB of SRAM. The dual-bank embedded flash memory allows simultaneous read and write operations. Additionally, it has a built-in memory protection unit (MPU) for task isolation, improving system’s reliability. The chip can be powered by 1.7V-3.6V power supply and the I/O port can support 5V voltage levels. Furthermore, the built-in power management unit is further optimized providing 5 power-saving modes. The operating current of the MCU, with all peripherals enabled and in full-speed operation mode is only 332µA/MHz, which is 32% lower than the current GD32F4 Arm Cortex^®-M4 based MCUs. Also, the minimum standby current, powered by an external battery, is only 0.7µA.

Outstanding high-precision timer and mixed signal integration

GD32E5 now introduces, for the first time, a built-in super high resolution timer (SHRTimer). It includes 5 independent counters which can generate 5 groups of 2 PWM control signals supporting dead time complementary output and the signal’s frequency can reach up to 11.5GHz with highest resolution of 90ps. Due to its advance integration with other peripherals, this allows to generate various high-frequency waveforms for applications such as switching power supplies and motor control.

The analog components of the GD32E5 also adopt a highly integrated new design. In order to provide accurate analog measurement, the new chip integrates three 12-bit high-performance ADCs with a sampling rate of 2.6MSPS which supports fully differential inputs, up to 21 channels and supports 16-bit hardware oversampling with configurable resolution and filtering function. The actual effective number of bits and its linearity are also significantly improved compared to similar products in the market. Additionally, it provides two 12-bit DACs and three ultra-fast comparators with a propagation delay of 22ns.

Rich peripheral interfaces fully assist the industrial Internet

The GD32E5 introduces a brand-new USB 2.0 OTG dual-function controller. The built-in hardware PHY provides a variety of operating rates for design flexibility, including 480Mbps high-speed (HS) mode and 12Mbps full-speed (FS) mode. It also supports Device, HOST, OTG and other operating modes, while it supports crystal-less design with independent 480MHz PLL to reduce the usage cost. It is currently passing relevant certifications to ensure the compliance with USB-IF design standards.

The newly added SQPI controller supports serial, two-wire and four-wire interface for external memories such as SQPI Flash and SQPI PSRAM. Thereby, easily expanding its external memory resources making it suitable for mobile printers, display screens fingerprint recognition, OTA upgrades and other applications that require large RAM buffers. Moreover, the new GD32EPRT special-purpose series now integrates 4MB of PSRAM.

In order to realize a wide range of embedded control type applications, the GD32E5 is equipped with rich standard peripheral resources: up to nine 16-bit general-purpose timers, two 16-bit advanced vector control timers, one 32-bit general-purpose timer, two 16-bit basic timers and two multi-channel DMA controllers. The communication interface includes six UART, three SPI, three I2C, two I2S and one SDIO. It also integrates three CAN-FD (flexible data-rate) interfaces for CAN bus network, with the highest data rate reaching 6Mb/s and one 10/100M adaptive fast Ethernet controller (MAC), which can assist in the development of real-time applications with Ethernet connectivity.

The new MCU has 6KV electrostatic protection (ESD) capabilities and uses clock spread spectrum technology to reduce electromagnetic interference (EMI) of high-speed digital systems, while at the same time it completely complies with industrial-grade high reliability and temperature standards. The GD32E5 series of MCUs include 4 product series and 23 product models, including GD32E503, GD32E505, GD32E507 and GD32EPRT. All series are upwards binary compatible in the software model and share the same pin layout for the particular package type, thus providing great flexibility and releasing the great potential of the Cortex^®-M33 core.

GD32E5 series of general-purpose Cortex^®-M33 based MCUs New Features

GigaDevice adopts TSMC’s 40-nanometer low-power process to create an advanced microcontroller development platform, with industry-leading energy consumption ratio and high integration. It can help the industry to upgrade at a more economical cost price and further consolidate the leading position of the GD32 MCU family in the embedded microcontroller market. Eric Jin, Product Marketing Director of GigaDevice says: “As China’s first Arm^® Cortex^®-M33 core general-purpose MCU, and joining hands with TSMC, we launched the GD32E5 series high-performance new products, providing a cost-effective solution for high-precision industrial control and consumer applications with data-intensive, algorithm-intensive and communication-intensive requirements. We continue to support and expand the GD32 ecosystem, deepen in the market and industry needs, and enhance the user development experiences.”

About GD32 MCU

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 Cortex^®-M33 core MCU product series. GD32 series MCUs have become the mainstream choice for China’s 32-bit general-purpose MCU market. With a total of more than more than 400 million units shipped, more than 20,000 customers and 27 series with more than 360 part number selections, GigaDevice can provide solutions for a broad set of applications on the forefront of the market. GigaDevice GD32 MCU is also the first Chinese Arm^® University Program (AUP) partner, an Arm^® mbed™ IoT platform eco-partner, and the title sponsor of the “GigaDevice Cup” in China Graduate Electronic Design Contest. All models are compatible with each other in terms of software with scalable lines of hardware pin packages. They are fully applicable to all kinds of high-performance, mainstream and entry-level embedded control requirements, enabling cost-effective value while providing a comprehensive ecosystem and ease of use. More information please visit website GD32MCU.com.