GigaDevice

GigaDevice Semiconductor (Chinese: 兆易创新; pinyin: zhàoyì chuāngxīn) is a Chinese NOR flash memory designer.[1][2] It also produces microcontrollers, some of them are based on the ARM architecture (GD32 series), and other on the RISC-V architecture (GD32V series).[3] GD32 chips were introduced in 2015 and are compatible in pinout and periphery options to the STM32 line of microcontrollers.[4]

GigaDevice Semiconductor (Beijing) Inc.
TypePublic
SSE: 603986
IndustrySemiconductors
Founded2005
Headquarters
Beijing,
China
Websitegigadevice.com

Acquisition

The company participated as part of the Chinese buyer consortium Uphill Investment Co. that acquired Integrated Silicon Solution Inc., a semiconductor company that is among the major producers of NOR flash, in 2015 for US$731 million.[5] The buyer consortium beat out an offer by Cypress Semiconductor, a major competitor of GigaDevice in the NOR flash market.[6]

The buyer consortium of Uphill Investment Co. comprises eTown MemTek Ltd, Summitview Capital, Beijing Integrated Circuit Design and Test Fund, and Huaqing Jiye Investment Management Co., Ltd. GigaDevice along with Beijing ETOWN, an investment firm and economic development agency of the Beijing Municipal Government, were the equity holders of eTown MemTek Ltd.[7]

Products

Microcontrollers
GigaDevice GD32F103CBT6 ARM Cortex-M3 based microcontroller die.

The GD32 series of microcontrollers are based on the ARM Cortex-M3 core. It was introduced in 2013 and consists of six product lines: Basic, Mainstream, Value, Connectivity, Performance, and Extend. MCU frequency is in range 48-120 MHz.[8] Some GD32 chips are pin-compatible with STM32 series of STMicroelectronics company.[4]

The GD32V series was introduced in 2019 and replaces ARM Cortex cores with custom implementation of RISC-V MCU core named "Bumblebee Core" (designed by Nuclei System Technology[9]).[3][10][11]

References
  1. "Company Profile". 16 June 2017.
  2. Yoshida, Junko (2012-09-19). "China Fabless: Why is GigaDevice chasing the no-growth$3 billion NOR flash market?". EETimes. Retrieved 25 November 2019.
  3. Huang, Illumi (2019-08-26). "GigaDevice Intros General-Purpose RISC-V MCUs". EETimes. Retrieved 25 November 2019.
  4. Aufranc, Jean-Luc (21 December 2015). "GigaDevice GD32 is a Faster, Software and Pin-to-pin STM32 Compatible Cortex M3 MCU". CNX Software. Retrieved 25 November 2019.
  5. "ISSI Shareholders Approve Acquisition by Uphill Investment". Bloomberg. June 30, 2015.
  6. "Technavio Announces Top Five Vendors in the Global NOR Flash Market from 2016 to 2020". BusinessWire. June 13, 2016.
  7. "Schedule 14a". Securities and Exchange Commission.
  8. Jin, Eric (July 2015). "GD32 Series ARM® Cortex® -M3 MCU Introduction" (PDF). eetaiwan.com. Retrieved 25 November 2019.
  9. Bumblebee Processor Core. Concise Data Sheet, Nuclei System Technology
  10. "GigaDevice Releasing RISC-V MCUs And Development Boards". Hackaday. 27 August 2019. Retrieved 25 November 2019.
  11. Winning, Ally (2 September 2019). "Open-source RISC-V MCU with Bumblebee core". eeNews Embedded.
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