Der Blätterkatalog benötigt Javascript.
Bitte aktivieren Sie Javascript in Ihren Browser-Einstellungen.
The Blätterkatalog requires Javascript.
Please activate Javascript in your browser settings.
26 The Official Daily Tag 2 – Mittwoch 16 November 2022 Microprocessors Microcontrollers ❚ RISC-V Established semiconductor manufacturers see great potential Calista Redmond CEO of RISC-V International had already stated in an interview with Markt Technik in the summer of this year that RISC-Vis definitely no longer perceived as a hobbyist architecture Activities by semiconductor manufacturers confirm her statement The first company to come to market with a generalpurpose 32-bit microcontroller based on the RISC-Vcore was GigaDevice Semiconductor with its GD32VF103 MCU series in 2019 – this product won the title of the best hardware product of the year at embedded world 2020 GigaDevice Semiconductor Eric Jin Product Marketing Director at GigaDevice explains that this MCU is designed for mainstream development needs and “provides a costeffective solution for developers who need an opensource processor core in this case the RISC-V ” With the GD32VF103 series GigaDevice is targeting embedded applications in the fields of industrial control consumer electronics IoT edge computing artificial intelligence and deep learning The company of course also maintains its Armbased controllers The majority of its microcontrollers are based on Arm processor cores – developments with these architectures also continue But Jin also emphasizes that GigaDevice will continue its developments of generalpurpose RISC-V MCUs Specifically GigaDevice plans to launch its next GD32 RISC-V MCUs as early as next year Eric Jin says “GigaDevice is a strategic member of the RISC-V Foundation and continues to promote RISC-Vtechnology at industry events and seminars around the world for example at the RISC-V Summit in China Japan the U Sand many other industry events including embedded world and electronica ” And with a view to the ecosystem that is crucial for all controllers he explains “There are several industryleading ecosystem partners around the world that are actively involved with GD32 MCUs They provide evaluation tools including IDEs debuggers development kits and embedded software such as IAR Segger Ashling Embeetle Seeed development boards and many others ” Microchip Technology Tim Morin Technical Fellow at Microchip Technology also sees Microchip in a pioneering role He says the company attended the 2nd RISC-V Workshop in Berkeley back in 2015 “We immediately recognized the technological innovation that RISC-Voffers and we also recognized that RISC-Vis also an innovator on the business side ” Accordingly the company at that time Microsemi began developing numerous soft IP cores for its proprietary FPGAs Then the company introduced the first standard products with RISC-Vcores for the broader market the PolarFire SoCs with a hardened RISC-Vbased complete microprocessor subsystem Tim Morin is convinced that there are now no regional or applicationspecific differences with regard to acceptance Nvidia Nvidia was known to want to acquire Arm however this year the acquisition was called off because the regulatory difficulties were simply too great Nonetheless the company is quite active in the RISC-Vspace and has been for a very long time Mark Overby Chief Platform and Security Architect at Nvidia emphasizes “Nvidia has been involved with the RISC-Varchitecture for many years We presented some of our early efforts in this area at the 4 th Annual RISC-V Workshop in 2016 Today we use embedded processing elements in our automotive SoCs that are compliant with Arm RISC-Vand proprietary instruction set architectures ” Nvidia has also participated in the Security Committee to make designs more secure run attack simulation scenarios and share lessons learned with the community to improve resilience for all use cases At Nvidia according to Mark Overby it’s not a matter of choosing between Arm and RISC-Vrather the company is focused on optimizing embedded processing elements according to the different workloads Overby says “This could include an element that manages the power supply boot process audio or other functions For automotive SoCs this could mean using a mix of instruction set architectures ” Commenting on the extent to which there are acceptance differences Overby says “The computing elements embedded in our automotive SoCs are typically not accessible to the customer and accordingly the instruction set architecture used doesn’t matter to the customer base ” Renesas Electronics Renesas Electronics is also one of the RISC-Vsupporters and the company’s recent announcements make that abundantly clear Bernd Westhoff Director of IoT Product Marketing in Renesas Electronics’ IoT Infrastructure Business Unit explains the following from an MCU perspective “Renesas is committed to playing a leading role in the MCU world with a multiarchitecture portfolio This includes the continuous expansion of our roadmap based on Arm and Renesas proprietary cores such as RX and RL78 The addition of RISC-Varchitecture will further strengthen our offering by providing innovative solutions for future applicationspecific standard products With the RISC-Vbased ASSP for motor control applications Renesas and its partners enable customers to benefit from a readytouse solution ” However Renesas is not only active in the MCU sector with RISC-Vthe company also relies on ISA in the MPU segment In this context Johannes Brücker Business Development Manager RZ MPU in Renesas Electronics’ IoT Infrastructure Business Unit refers to the RZ Five components entrylevel 64-bit generalpurpose variants equipped with the CPU IP core from Andes – the core is with the RISC-Vopensource architecture ISAcompatible Brücker also emphasizes that the RISC-V MPUs increase customer choice thus giving them more flexibility in product development The company has even made sure that former Arm users can switch to RISC-V In this respect Brücker explains “To make the migration from Arm as easy as possible RZ Five is pincompatible with RZ G2UL Type 1 for Linux and RZ A3UL for RTOS ” Regionally according to Bernd Westhoff and Johannes Brücker Asian customers in particular are currently very interested in the RISC-Vproducts Westhoff adds that there are currently only a few commercially viable RISC-Vproducts on the MCU market Westhoff continues “With regard to our ASSP launched in September we are seeing a positive response in the Chinese market and growing interest in other Asian regions At electronica we are presenting our RISC-V ASSP solution to determine potential interest from other regions ” And Brücker notes that for the RZ Five MPUs optimized for IoT edge devices the main interest is also coming from China and other Asian regions Here demand would be driven by geopolitical risks but there is also increasing interest from European Eric Jin GigaDevice Semiconductor “The new generalpurpose RISC-Vbased MCU family will feature Wi-Fi and Bluetooth modules This will thus strengthen our wireless portfolio and open up various IoT and AIoT markets ” Tim Morin Microchip Technology “There is tremendous interest in RISC-V And in the meantime everyone knows RISC-Vtoo ” Bernd Westhoff Renesas Electronics “The RISC-Varchitecture ranges from 32-bit to 64-bit variants accordingly the potential is enormous In the field of AIoT where MCUs are used there are already many AI ML software partners who would be able to provide support as soon as more commercially viable RISC-Vproducts become available and provide benchmarks ”