Who are the manufacturers of MCU chips? The single-chip microcomputer was born in 1971 and has gone through three stages: SCM, MCU, and SoC. The single-chip microcomputer has developed from the previous 1-bit, 4-bit, 8-bit, and 16-bit to the current 32-bit or even 64-bit. After the 1990s, with the great development of consumer electronic products, the single-chip microcomputer technology has been greatly improved, and a number of single-chip manufacturers have been born one after another that have passed the market test and gained a good reputation. Let‘s take a look at the introduction of the original MCU chip:

1. Renesas

Headquarters: Japan

Renesas is the king of the MCU field and the absolute leader. He is the MCU giant composed of three companies: Renesas, NEC, and Mitsubishi, and has the first market share in the car market. They have obtained the authorization of ARM, but they are not used to make MCUs, they are used to make processors. MCUs all use Renesas‘ own architecture.

2, NXP (NXP) Freescale (Freescale) (the latter was acquired by the former)

The microcontroller of NXP (NXP) is a microcontroller based on the 80C51 core, which embeds functions such as power-down detection, simulation and on-chip RC oscillator, which makes 51LPC suitable for high-integration, low-cost, low-power application design Meet various performance requirements. Almost all of NXP‘s MCUs use the Cortex-m series architecture.

3. Microchip Atmel (the latter was acquired by the former)

Headquarters: United States

Microchip Technology is the world‘s leading supplier of microcontrollers and analog semiconductors, and Microchip microcontrollers are the microcontrollers with the largest market share growth. Its main product is 16C series 8-bit single-chip microcomputer. The CPU adopts RISC structure, only 33 instructions, running fast, and is famous for its low price. Generally, the price of single-chip microcomputers is less than one dollar. Microchip microcontrollers do not have mask products, and they are all OTP devices (FLASH-type microcontrollers have been launched in recent years). Microchip emphasizes cost-saving optimized design, high-volume, low-grade, price-sensitive products. MICROCHIP‘s PIC microcontroller products are characterized by small size, low power consumption, simplified instruction set, good anti-interference, high reliability, strong analog interface, good code confidentiality, and most chips are compatible with FLASH program memory chip.

The company has its own single-chip microcomputer called PIC, which includes PIC8, PIC16, PIC32 and other series. The PIC microcontroller also has a microAptiv core using MIPS; there is also a series of products that are traditional 8051/80c51 MCUs. The company cooperates with MIPS and uses MIPS cores as MCUs to fight against ARM, so they do not have MCUs based on ARM architecture.

4. STMicroelectronics (ST)

Headquarters: Italy

STMicroelectronics has a strong product lineup, from the robust low-power 8-bit microcontroller STM8 series, to 32 based on various ARM Cortex-M0 and M0, Cortex-M3, Cortex-M4, Cortex-M7 cores Bit flash microcontroller STM32 family. Provides a wealth of MCU selection resources for embedded product developers. At the same time, STMicroelectronics continues to expand and expand its product line, including a variety of ultra-low-power microcontroller series.

5. Texas Instruments (TI)

Texas Instruments (TI) is a global leader in the design and manufacture of analog and digital semiconductor ICs. In addition to providing analog technology and digital signal processing (DSP), TI is also deeply involved in the field of microcontrollers and has launched a series of 32-bit microcontrollers, of which the Piccolo series of microprocessors are the most representative, such as C2000 and F28x series. TI‘s MCU product line is very broad, and has launched many series of products for different fields.

6. Cypress

Cypress‘s PSoC application capabilities have been expanded. Cypress‘s latest generation of programmable system-on-chip PSoC4 has introduced ARM‘s 32-bit Cortex-M0 core, which is expected to improve the price-performance ratio of its products and gradually erode the market share of 8- and 16-bit microcontrollers (MCUs). Cypress‘s MCU is mainly PSOC series. This PSOC is not only MCU, but also integrates other things, which is much more powerful than MCU. Its uniqueness is that it has programmability and flexibility, that is, MCU emulates FPGA.

ShenZhen Hao Qi Core Technology is a company focusing on Renesas, NXP, Microchip, TI, Cypress and other chips. It is a professional chip agent and provides one-stop electronic product supporting services.