In recent years, with the advent of the AIOT era, the RISC-V architecture with the characteristics of open source, free, modular, streamlined, etc. has become more and more valued by the global chip industry, and gradually becomes the first choice for many head manufacturers, which has driven autonomy autonomyR & D wave of MCU.
Recently, the reporter of the "Entering the Industrial Chain" column of Xinzhiya interviewed the 64-bit RISC-V architecture industrial IoT chip manufacturer, the founder of Dr. Jiang Chaohui, the founder of Yueji Technology,ThenYuan Yongsheng, deputy general manager of Epart, another well-known RISC-V manufacturer Eps, discussed the current development of Epste and the prospect of the RISC-V industry in the context of the rapid development of RISC-V.
In 2021, the shipments exceeded 100 million, which is based on domesticRISC-VInsideNuclear 32 -bit MCU shipments and market share are far ahead
It is understood that Embart was founded in 2012 and is a high -tech enterprise focusing on R & D, designing the national 32 -bit MCU.Since its establishment, the company has always insisted on developing 32 -bit MCU products with high -reliability production and production of mass production. At present, 5 major series of products including the APT32F102X series, APT32F110X series, and APT32F172X series are formed.The Internet of Things and other fields.
The main application scenarios of Epart products
Source: Epite
"Epste's R & D team is mainly from the MCU team from Samsung China R & D Center." Yuan Yongsheng introduced to reporters. "Epste has been devoted to IP research and development in the first five years since its establishment in 2012 and created it, creating it, creating it, creating it and creating it.A whole set of self -developed micro -processor IP libraries with domestic and independent intellectual property rights. Therefore, all peripheral IPs of Epste MCU are developed by themselves to ensure that each peripheral is highly reliable and controllable."
It is worth noting that among Epster's many products, one product is particularly noticeable.This product is Epste's newly listed RISC-V kernel based on the RISC-V kernel in 2021. The 32-level high-performance and high-performance MCU APT32F1023.According to the company, this is a 32 -bit MCU based on 55nm and 12 -inch wafer embedded Flash processes.
Yuan Yongsheng said that APT32F1023 is based on Pingtou's CPU kernel R & D and production. Its design standards meet the requirements of industrial levels. It has a wide voltage and high signal -to -noise ratio. Its main frequency can reach up to 48MHz.And independent removal instruments.In addition, it can support internal module interconnection triggers, equipped with enhanced PWM and 12 -bit high -precision ADC.At present, APT32F1023 has been widely used in market fields such as industrial control, the Internet of Things, consumer electronics, and smart home appliances.
With its superior performance and competitive price advantage, APT32F1023 has won the recognition of many customers in the market, and has mass -produced goods among the major customers such as Bosch, Xiaomi, Panasonic, Jiuyang.
The reporter learned that Epste's 32 -bit MCU products shipped more than 100 million in 2021,Risc in China-VNuclear 32 -bit MCU shipments and market share are far aheadBehind this excellent achievement is the insistence on technological innovation and quality control of Epste for ten years, and it is also a huge breakthrough in pure domestic MCU.
Yuan Yongsheng pointed out that Epste's view of technology innovation is a life, and this one has always maintained a level that has always maintained higher than his peers.As of now, Epste has obtained more than 30 invention patent authorization, software copyright, integrated circuit cloth design, etc., and has passed the ISO9001 quality system certification.
In the next 4 years, the amount of delivery is expected to achieve a compound annual growth of 60%, and the RISC-V ecology is built in depth with Pingtou.
As we all know, due to the excellent characteristics of RISC-V, short and intensive, open source and free from instructions such as X86, ARM, etc., in recent years, it has attracted the support and layout of many countries and enterprises.
Throughout at home and abroad, as the RISC-V industry is booming, independent RISC-V processor IP companies have begun to appear, and some powerful giants such as Samsung, Western Data, and Ali Ping Tou also began to use the RISC-V architecture.Develop its own processor kernel.Many giants in the industry have entered the game, indicating that the RISC-V has been widely recognized by the industry.
In terms of shipments, Calista Redmond, the CEO of RISC-V International, revealed that the number of chip shipments based on the RISC-V architecture kernel in 2021 has reached 12 billion, and it is expected to maintain a compound annual growth rate of 60.69%in the next 4 years.By 2025, the delivery volume will reach 80 billion yuan.In fact, it is not easy to reach a milestone of 10 billion. It is necessary to know that the ARM in the middle of the day has only achieved this achievement after 17 years, and the RISC-V architecture is realized in only 12 years.
source:RISC-V International
It is worth noting that, as a rising star, although the new RISC-V has developed rapidly, compared with X86 and ARM, there are still insufficient in many places, especially in ecology, behind the other two major structures.
Yuan Yongsheng pointed out: "The so-called 'ecology' is actually a huge concept, including the open architecture standards, hardware ecology, tool chain software ecology, application software ecology and many other contents. At present, my country's RISC-V ecological development is still in its infancy. Except for the core open architecture standards, the rest requires practitioners to improve, which is extremely challenging for the research and development and promotion of RISC-V products. "
However, the good news is, withThe continuous development of RISC-V,In recent years, Alibaba Pingtou, Sifive Technology, Xinlai Technology, etc. have been responsible.RISC-V Enterprise.Among them, I am the most typical of Pingtou.It is understood that Pingtou has currently has Duanyun integrated stack product series, covering the data center artificial intelligence chip, processor IP authorization, etc., which can achieve full coverage of chip -end design links.
In terms of processor IP authorization, Pingtou Ge Xuan Tie RISC-V series processor adopts self-developed technology, which can cover various scenarios from low power to high-performance, support AliOS, FRERTOS, RT-Thread, Linux, Android and other operations operations.The system has been successfully applied in the fields of microcontroller, industrial control, smart home appliances, smart grids, artificial intelligence, multimedia and automotive electronics.According to Pingtou's previous introduction, the company's mysterious iron series processor has shipped over 2.5 billion yuan, with more than 150 customers and over 500 authorized numbers, and has become the largest domestic CPU in China.
Pingtou Brother Open Source Four Xuan Iron RISC-V processor
source：Pingtou
Brother Pingtou is not satisfied with this.In order to promote more manufacturers to recognize RISC-V and gradually adopt this architecture to jointly promote the prosperity of the RISC-V ecosystem. At the scene of the Yunqi Conference last year, Zhang Jianfeng, the president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligent, announced thatThe processor and the full stack software and tools based on the multi -operating system based on the black iron.According to its introduction, the open source Xuan Iron series RISC-V processor, including 4 mass production processor IPs including Xuan Iron E902, E906, C906, C910, and a multi-operating system based on Xuan IronEssenceDevelopers can download the mysterious iron source code through the open -header GitHub and the Open Chip Community. Based on this, the open source EDA collaboration, innovate hardware architecture, and enrich the software application ecosystem.
Yuan Yongsheng said that the RISC-V open source instruction set will be the starting point of the open source processor, which will drive the growth of open source processor, open source tool chain, open source IP, open source SOC and other open source chip design ecology.Pingtou's mysterious iron series processor has been effectively verified by the market. Next, with the gradual improvement of the RISC-V ecosystem, its market share will also be further improved.
As the only deep strategic partner of Ali Pingtou in the field of GM MCU chips, Epste has cooperated with Pan Touge in the RISC-V processor core for many years.At present, Epste's MCU product line based on the RISC-V kernel has the corresponding product of the same grade of the same level of ARM M0, M3, and M4, and the product series of the benchmark M7 has also been planned.
Eopatt and Pan Ge reached in -depth cooperation
Source: Epite
"Epste and Pingtou are currently jointly constructing the RISC-V ecosystem. In addition to the CSI component certification of RISC-V, Epste will also join forces to create the '1520' ecological standard, that is, 20 days of mass production. At present, Epste has independently developed a complete development kit: debugging tools, burning tools, compilation software, etc., allowing engineers to quickly use RISC-V MCU products.Carry out activities such as engineer training certification to create a more complete MCU ecosystem. "Yuan Yongsheng said.
It is worth mentioning that, on the basis of previous cooperation, Epste recently announced that it has reached a further in-depth cooperation agreement with Ali Ping's brother. The two parties will continue to dig RISC-V high-performance, high-energy efficiency, low power consumption and intelligent potential, plan to launch six major RISC-V chip series products in the next year, providing the market with more new 32-bit MCU new options.
Persist in "domestic innovation" and contribute to the self -controlled and controllable Chinese chip
Since the new crown epidemic, the global lack of cores has continued. The lack of cores not only extended the delivery cycle, but also caused the price of corresponding products to rise.In the case of such high prosperity in the industry, the sales of MCU have also increased significantly.According to statistics from IC Insights, global MCU sales in 2021 increased by 23%year -on -year to a record 19.6 billion US dollars.IC Insights predicts that the sales of 32 -bit MCUs in the next five years are expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 9.4%, and it will reach $ 28.5 billion by 2026.
Benefiting from the improvement of the industry's prosperity, domestic MCU manufacturers have also ushered in better development opportunities. Various high -end domestic domestic -produced alternative MCU products with Douzhou instruments, Semiconductor, Ruisa, NXP, and Yingfei Ling are endless.EssenceJudging from the current situation, as long as the manufacturers with certain technical and product reserves and the market recognition in the early stage have a good opportunity to stand out in the MCU's domestic replacement wave.
However, unlike other domestic MCU manufacturers, Epste has always adhered to the "domestic innovation" route, and provides differentiated products to the market through self -developed full set of IP libraries+nationwide production cores, instead of taking "imitation imitation imitation."Replacement" shortcut.
Autonomous property embedded microprocessor IP library and verifying the mass production of hundreds of millions of chips. At the same time, we can based on the IP library of independent intellectual property rights to ensure the quality of the chip according to the actual needs of the customer to optimize the chip area, Increase the cost -effectiveness of the product, reduce product costs, and help customers improve the competitive advantage of the product. At present, the Epste IP library has continuously iterated and optimized according to actual needs, which can cover high -end fields such as AI computing power and artificial vision. "
"Domestic chip companies are not enough to do import substitutions. It is not conducive to domestic technology innovation by high compatibility of chips of international head manufacturers to quickly enter the market.It is the problem that the industry needs to think deeply. "Yuan Yongsheng further added.
Judging from the current development status, RISC-V already has the potential to become a high-end performance architecture.However, the RISC-V architecture is still in the early stages of rapid development, so its ecological construction has become one of the keys to competition with X86 and ARM.Only by collaborative innovation of technology, products, software and hardware, and more companies and institutions can reduce the cost of innovation, the RISC-V architecture can be perfect, and thus go further.
Looking forward to the future, Yuan Yongsheng pointed out, "In the next few years, it will be Epste's high-speed development stage. We will continue to adhere to domestic innovation and continue to launch more MCU products of mid-to-high-end RISC-V to the market. I hope to contribute to the domestic chip industry.We have our own strength. We also look forward to more and more outstanding manufacturers in the future can join the RISC-V track to help domestic MCUs independent controllable and high-quality development. "Yuan Yongsheng finally said with confidence.
Conclusion
Since its establishment, Epste has adhered to the path of domestic innovation, and has been independent of the darkness in the dark. After ten years of technical accumulation, and combining the prosperity, it has achieved remarkable results in 2021.The success of Epst truly interpreted what it means "ten years of grinding a sword, and the fragrance of plum blossoms."In the future, we need more companies that have both strength and feelings like Epste to participate in the construction of the RISC-V ecological construction in order to achieve the prosperity of the RISC-V ecosystem and the autonomous controlling of domestic chips.
