Mainland Chinese 32-bit MCU's, MPU's and FPGA's Megathread

[soFPG]

But they don't mind making linux-sunxi work for free to mainline their CPUs 

Edit: Actually I have to tell you a very positive experience I had with one chinese company (they make a WiFi chip similar to the ESP32 but with Cortex M4): I asked them (in english) for a low amount of samples (15 pieces). I didn't have to ask twice and they shipped the samples including one of their discovery boards to the address of my taobao agent without me paying anything. Great service 

[technix]

But they don't mind making linux-sunxi work for free to mainline their CPUs 

linux-sunxi has no relation with Allwinner except linux-sunxi folks works on Allwinner chips.

Edit: Actually I have to tell you a very positive experience I had with one chinese company (they make a WiFi chip similar to the ESP32 but with Cortex M4): I asked them (in english) for a low amount of samples (15 pieces). I didn't have to ask twice and they shipped the samples including one of their discovery boards to the address of my taobao agent without me paying anything. Great service 

AFAIK most MCU makers have open docs and provide good support. It is the AP SoC makers that forces very invasive KYC.

[peter-h]

Thanks to this great thread I found this chinese "equivalent" (not quite but still potentially useful) for the 32F407
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/opinions-on-st-32f407vgt6-versus-gigadevice-gd32f407vgt6/

Where to actually buy the GD is a very good Q...

[brucehoult]

Thanks to this great thread I found this chinese "equivalent" (not quite but still potentially useful) for the 32F407
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/opinions-on-st-32f407vgt6-versus-gigadevice-gd32f407vgt6/

Where to actually buy the GD is a very good Q...

https://www.tme.com/nz/en/katalog/microcontrollers-and-microprocessors_100590/?s_order=desc&search=gd32&s_field=1000011

They only seem to have stock of ...

GD32F305RBT6
GD32F403VGT6

GD32VF103CBT6
GD32VF103RBT6
GD32VF103TBU6
GD32VF103VBT6

... at the moment.

I've bought the RISC-V chips from them before with no problems.

[technix]

They only seem to have stock of ...

GD32VF103CBT6
GD32VF103RBT6
GD32VF103TBU6
GD32VF103VBT6

... at the moment.

Damn they still have those GD32VF parts? I had hunted for GD32VF parts for a long time and they were just not available anywhere in China.

[ZakiAlasadi]

Also there is a company called WinnerMicro, manufactures 32 bit MCU's such as:
WinnerMicro W806
WinnerMicro W600
W801
W800

https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/11/08/winnermicro-w806-240-mhz-mcu-2-development-board/

[DiTBho]

In 2021, Allwinner and Ingenic were problematic for me. I have direct experiences.

[ntn888]

There's a new cheaper board at around 2usd RISCV chip with ble & zigbee, XT-ZB1. I run a dedicated blog https://simplycreate.online/ studying the chips (rather pleasant) SDK.

[ZakiAlasadi]

There is TG7100c a 32 bit RISC-V WiFi & BLE MCU but I don't know the manufacturer.

[peter-h]

Can anyone report on the peripheral compatibility of these Chinese chips?

The 32 bit ARM uCs are a licensed ARM32 core and then they synthesise the peripherals to try to match the 32F RM descriptions. But they obviously won't get it exactly the same. The theory is of course that if you wrote your code to the RM, it should work. But we all know this is BS. Looks here for a list for example
http://efton.sk/STM32/gotcha/index.html

[technix]

Can anyone report on the peripheral compatibility of these Chinese chips?

The 32 bit ARM uCs are a licensed ARM32 core and then they synthesise the peripherals to try to match the 32F RM descriptions. But they obviously won't get it exactly the same. The theory is of course that if you wrote your code to the RM, it should work. But we all know this is BS. Looks here for a list for example
http://efton.sk/STM32/gotcha/index.html

It is better to treat those chips as independent products and at least revalidate all your driver code.

[DEHiCKA]

+1 STM32 M0,M3,M4 Clones:
https://www.geehy.com/MCU

Also I have a board with tiny WLCSP90 (0.4mm pitch BGA) F405OG with no ST logo. Cannot find who makes them.
It's original ST.

[Smokey]

Bump.

Should I start another thread asking about where I can actually buy parts from Allwinner (A20) and Rockchip (RK3328), or is this a good place for that?

Where do places like Olimex get them?   If the answer is "direct", what are typical minimum orders and how likely are they to have samples/engineering qty for purchase?

Does anyone here actually have real experience using any of these SoC in production?

[chickenHeadKnob]

Bump.

Should I start another thread asking about where I can actually buy parts from Allwinner (A20) and Rockchip (RK3328), or is this a good place for that?

Where do places like Olimex get them?   If the answer is "direct", what are typical minimum orders and how likely are they to have samples/engineering qty for purchase?

Does anyone here actually have real experience using any of these SoC in production?

Since Olimex caters to industrial users who ask about longevity of supply the head honcho addresses this issue in the blog on their website. From memory they buy direct from AllWinner minimum quantity 40 or 50 thousand piece. I forget the exact number, I'am old.
ttps://olimex.wordpress.com/2020/06/17/allwinner-keep-their-promise-for-long-term-supply-of-t2-industrial-a20-soc-if-you-wonder-how-60k-of-allwinner-t2-soc-looks-like-you-can-see-now/

There are other older forum entries on this topic , you will have to search for them

 For samples I think you are stuck scouring aliexpress/taobao, or buy some dev boards from a supplier like Olimex

[DC1MC]

No love for Nuvoton (or is not Chinese enough being from Taiwan  )?
I hear that they have a pretty cool new arm32/64 dual core MCU with embedded RAM.

Is there a reference manual or can someone provide more information ?

Cheers,
DC1MC

[SiliconWizard]

Nuvoton yeah, they seem to have interesting stuff. Never evaluated them though.

[mon2]

Missing from the FPGA vendor list is EFINIX.

Also, Nuvoton is the former Winbond group. We used their 8051 by the buckets back in the day. Not their first rodeo.

[paf]

Another ARM M0 to M4 Chinese supplier - Foshan Synwit:
https://www.synwit.cn

All the site (and data sheets) in Chinese, but they have Keil support and a Git repository:
https://github.com/Synwit-Co-Ltd

Some parts are available on LCSC, and one can find on Aliexpress boards with the swm181cbt6.

I have no experience with them to report, just saw them on the web... 
 

[paf]

More chinese semiconductor manufacturers:

https://www.essemi.com    - Cortex M3 Processors

http://www.alpscale.cn/en - ARM () Processors

https://www.bluetrum.com - AB32VG1 RISC Procesor with Bluetooth

These three (and many others) are supported by RT-Thread Studio  https://www.rt-thread.io 


Another thing I would love to know more seems to be a small FPGA with a RISC-V hard core from Anlogic: https://www.anlogic.com/product/fpga/salswift

Sadly, it seems that Anlogic does not want customers out of China...   

[up8051]

Another thing I would love to know more seems to be a small FPGA with a RISC-V hard core from Anlogic: https://www.anlogic.com/product/fpga/salswift

Sadly, it seems that Anlogic does not want customers out of China...

Interesting FPGA

[__george__]

I learned some new manufacturers that I didn't know from this thread and then I got curious to try some of their chips.

So for what it's worth here is my experience.

I got a Cortex-M3 chip from MindMotion (MM32F3270), a Cortex-M4 from Artery(AT32F413) and and another from XHSC(HC32F460).

Mindmotion:  First of all the website is in English and it is reasonably easy to navigate. They provide a decently written documentation (User manual, Datasheet, Errand). They also provide a Keil package and a zip with their HAL and plenty of examples.
So getting your hands dirty quickly was surprisingly straight forward for me. The code in the samples was very clean and easy to read and I also liked their HAL APIs as well.
In the negative side I found it annoying that their Keil package only includes SVD files for register descriptions. So I had to convert the SVD file to something that Keil could understand so that I can get peripheral register explanations.

Artery: Again the website is in English and is easy to navigate. The documentation of this chip really impressed me I have to say. The provide all the usual documentation in English (User manual, Datasheet, Errand) and additionally they provide getting started guides, migration from STM32 chips, product selection guides and more. The quality of the documentation is also quite high, I had no problem to navigate and find the information that I wanted. In the IDE side they provide a Keil package, and also their own Eclipse based IDE which I ended up trying. (They also have a GUI configuration tool for the pins configuration of the chip, similar to what the STM32 has). Their Eclipse based IDE worked without issues to program and debug the chip. Their HAL code quality was pretty good as well with clean and easy to read APIs and HAL functions and they provide plenty of samples as well. The only slight negative that I found was that, even though they provide plenty of examples,  they don't support opening their examples projects with their own IDE.

XHSC: Their website is trolling us, they have an English button in the website which does nothing I eventually realized that they have a reference manual document in English in their website but that's that only English document that I could find. Searching the internet revealed an English datasheet as well. Both of the documents were not written in good English and it was not always straightforward to understand what they try to say. They also provide a Keil package and examples as well. Getting a blinky to run was pretty straightforward. But it was quite time consuming to go further than this. Their HAL functions were not very straightforward and and overall code quality was not as good as the other ones I tried. To be fair though, the chip itself seems pretty good feature and it is probably the most feature rich one, so maybe that played some role.


In the tests that I did I build an example with a simple use case:
1) Sleep until there is an interrupt
2) Receive 10 bytes from UART and copy them from UART -> memory through DMA
3) When the 10th byte is received wake up the chip and blink a LED

I would really be interested to hear if there are other opinions here

[John Celo]

Are WCH MCUs going back on LCSC?

I'm interested in CH32X033F8P6 in particular.

Just recently got WCH-Linke and an evaluation board, as well as few bare CH32V003 and CH32X033 mcus,
and had a pretty pleasant first experience with them as a beginner, easy to set up, compile & debug, pretty decent english documentation as well.

Everything self explanatory and works right out of the box (atleast when using their tools, MounRiver studio, WCHIsp, etc).

Only thing what's missing is a reliable source like LCSC.

[SiliconWizard]

There is some stock at LCSC for the CH32V307. Not much else at the moment?
The availability of WCH MCUs is a problem at least for us outside of China. You can probably contact WCH directly, but I suspect they won't care much unless you order (hundreds of) thousands of chips.

[brucehoult]

There is some stock at LCSC for the CH32V307. Not much else at the moment?
The availability of WCH MCUs is a problem at least for us outside of China. You can probably contact WCH directly, but I suspect they won't care much unless you order (hundreds of) thousands of chips.

When I spoke to them on the phone last year they told me they'll run a wafer with 3000 chips through the foundry for any current or past design, if asked, and 3000 is also the minimum for customized chips (but that would also incur NRE costs).

They are responsive to Twtter and email, and every time I mention them on Twitter they offer to send me demo boards or coupons to cover the cost on Aliexpress.

I have no experience with LCSC, but you definitely can get things from WCH directly, for quantities larger than are on Ali.

[zilp]

Are WCH MCUs going back on LCSC?

I'm interested in CH32X033F8P6 in particular.

WCH MCUs are available on LCSC?! I mean, not all of them, but quite a few, and at least for stuff that's listed but not in stock, chances are you can get a reasonable quote even for small quantities.

For stuff that's not listed, you probably should tell them. Ultimately, them seeing demand is likely to increase the chances that they'll add a part. Or you can just ask for a quote if you need larger quantities, of course, but I'd guess hat they wouldn't make a quote for a handful of low-end MCUs that they don't have in their catalog.