Why Migrate?
The STM32 family of microcontrollers is one of the most extensive and ubiquitous families of microcontrollers on the market today. They offer a wide array of products, including the low-power STM32F4 line that is perfect for the Internet of Things (IoT), the high-performance STM32F7 line that is great for advanced applications, and the ultra-low-power STM32F3 line that is great for battery-powered applications.
Like much of the semiconductor manufacturing industry, the lead times for MCUs is widely reported to be over 52 weeks, which for many customers is simply untenable.
Geehy MCUs Pin to Pin compatible with STM32 MCUs
Geehy Semiconductor has a comprehensive line of microcontrollers designed to be pin to pin compatible with many of ST’s STM32 range of microcontrollers including the F0, F1, F4 series and soon to include some F7s as well. With Geehy’s ST-compatible MCUs, you can use all of the advanced features and capabilities of the STM32 family without having to worry about changing the pinout or reworking your whole design.
Ineltek has been guiding customers through the migration process for a number of projects recently and we’ve found that the Geehy MCUs have the same layout, memory map, peripheral support and performance. We are often able to supply a comparison table to demonstrate the ST and Geehy performance with analogue and digital parameters. The definition of the pins within the same package is the same, and new functions are completed through pin multiplexing. Memory and register addresses are the same. In fact, in many cases, Geehy can directly flash your existing firmware to their compatible MCU with any changes.
How easy is it to migrate from ST’s STM32CubeIDE to Geehy’s development platform
STM32CubeIDE is an advanced C/C++ development platform with peripheral configuration, code generation, code compilation, and debug features for their STM32 microcontrollers and microprocessors. Whilst Geehy’s MCUs can support Cube MX, their preferred software environments are Keil or IAR.
In the first instance, the STM32CubeMX code generation utility can generate IAR project files that work out of the box for your Geehy device. Manually adding your source file structure and custom settings (linker script, FPU etc) should be rather easy once you have that working minimal setup.
There is plenty of support available online on this topic but, in general, IAR has a better editor and compiler, but Keil has a much better simulator and debugger. If you are using an ARM Core processor, Keil is a better solution better suited to ARM MCUs, with greatly reduced learning time compared to IAR. Keil’s advanced debugging tools help make the transition far smoother.
Who is Geehy?
With 20 years of experience in IC chip design, Geehy is a professional supplier of products and solutions for industrial-grade general purpose MCU, BLE SoC, and IoT security SoC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Apexmic Microelectronics, headquartered at Ninestar Corporation who own one of the top 5 laser printer brands on the planet, Lexmark. The group has 20,000+ employees in 60 countries, with 10 R&D centres and a market cap of over 19.6bn yuan, with annual chip shipments are about 450 million.
Other MCU solutions
Ineltek has built its business on Microcontrollers and we work with some of the leading manufacturers in the world – many of whom can still provide very competitive lead times. So if you’re considering a migration away from your current MCU as part of a wider redevelopment of your design, Ineltek can provide MCU solutions from Holtek and Nuvoton suitable for a wide variety of Automotive, Industrial, Medical and Consumer applications.
Contact us now to find the perfect MCU solution for your project.