GigaDevice Embraces Arm Again with Its Performance-Centric Cortex-M33 GD32F5 Microcontrollers

Moving away from its recent RISC-V launches, GigaDevice's latest microcontroller is the 200MHz Cortex-M33-powered GD32F5 series.

Gareth Halfacree
6 months ago β€’ HW101

Chinese embedded electronics specialist GigaDevice has announced a new arm Cortex-M33F microcontroller range aimed firmly at high-performance applications: the GD32F5 family, which includes more storage space than the company's previous offerings and a clock speed up to 200MHz.

"The GD32F5 series high-performance MCUs [Microcontroller Units] offer significantly expanded storage space, excellent processing efficiency, and a wide array of interface options," the company says of its latest launch. "Compliant with the system-level IEC61508 SIL2 functional safety standard, they provide a comprehensive software and hardware security solution to meet the industrial market's demands for high reliability and security applications."

Using proprietary Arm Cortex-M33F cores, in a shift away from its recent release based around the free and open source RISC-V architecture, the GD32F5 offers a clock speed of up to 200MHz and a performance GigaDevice claims hits "up to" 3.31 CoreMarks/MHz. The chips can be specified with 1MB of static RAM (SRAM) and either 4.5MB or an impressive 7.5MB of on-chip flash storage β€” including a configurable 2MB area of zero wait-state program flash, with the rest used for data storage.

The chip family includes a range of peripherals including six I2C, six SPI, two I2S, and one SDIO buses, eight USART buses, and a USB 2.0 On-The-Go (OTG) interface that can be used in Full Speed and High Speed modes, along with two CAN FD buses and a single Ethernet interface. GigaDevice has confirmed two models at launch, across five package types: BGA176 and LQFP176/144/100/64, all of which support 1.71-3.6V supply voltages and have 5V-tolerant general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins.

The company has also confirmed a range of evaluation and "entry-level learning kits" featuring the chips, though at the time of writing had not confirmed pricing; the parts are sampling now, GigaDevice has confirmed, with mass production expected to take place in May. More information is available on the company's product page.

Gareth Halfacree
Freelance journalist, technical author, hacker, tinkerer, erstwhile sysadmin. For hire: freelance@halfacree.co.uk.
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