GD32VW553-UNIFI is an inexpensive wireless IoT module based on GigaDevice GD32VW553 RISC-V microcontroller featuring 2.4 GHz WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 LE connectivity, and offered with a PCB antenna or IPEX antenna connector.
The GD32VW553 MCU integrates 320KB SRAM and 4096KB on-chip flash, and supports link rates of up to 114.7 Mbps over WiFi and 2 Mbps over Bluetooth LE. The UNIFI module exposes 18 GPIOs from the microcontroller and is available in two different temperature ranges: -40 to +85°C or -40 to +105°C.
GD32VW553-UNIFI specifications:
- SoC – GigaDevice GD32VW553
- CPU – 32-bit RISC-V processor up to 160 MHz with RV32I/M/A/F/D/C/P/B instruction extensions
- Memory – 320KB (288 KB + 32KB shared) SRAM
- Storage – 4096 KB flash
- Wireless
- WiFi
- 802.11b/g/n/ax compatible
- 802.11i (WPA, WPA2, WPA3). Open, shared key, and pair-wise key authentication services
- Single antenna 1×1 stream in 20MHz channels
- upport of 802.11ax MCS up to MCS9 with a Max PHY rate of 114.7Mbps
- Bluetooth
- Low Energy 5.2
- 2Mbps PHY for BLE high-speed
- Long-Range modes @ 125 kbps, 500 kbps
- 2.4 GHz radio shared between WiFi and Bluetooth
- WiFi
- I/Os – 2x 8 through holes and 22 castellated holes
- Up to 18x GPIOs
- PWM, UART, I2C, SPI
- Analog – ADC
- Antenna
- Onboard PCB antenna for GD32VW553-UNIFI-IMH6/7
- IPEX connector for GD32VW553-UNIFI-EMH6/7
- Supply Voltaghe – 3.0 to 3.6V DC
- Dimensions – 24 x 16 x 2.2 mm
- Temperature Range
- -40 ~ 85°C for grade 6
- -40 ~ 105°C for grade 7
There’s plenty of documentation about the GD32VW553 MCU, modules, and software on the GD32MCU website. Some software tools include the GD-Link Utility Programmer, the Embedded Builder development environment (IDE) to configure peripherals graphically, generate C code, compile projects, and debug, a GD32VW553 Wi-Fi & BLE SDK, the GD32 Embedded AI framework, and others. Alternatively, developers can use the SEGGER Embedded Studio IDE for free or commercial use.
The GD32VW553-UNIFI is not the only module based on the GigaDevice RISC-V microcontroller, and there are two others: GD32VW553-MINI (20x GPIO) and GD32VW553-MD1 (28x GPIO). They have different form factors and numbers of I/Os. I covered the UNIFI module in this post, since it’s the only one I can find for sale.
The GD32VW553-UNIFI WiFI 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 LE module can be purchased on AliExpress for $2.13 plus shipping, and even lower for 30-piece orders. I could not find a breakout board or development board for the UNIFI module, but the GD32VW553K-START evaluation board features a GD32VW553-MD1 module and is listed on the SEGGER website. I could not find it on AliExpress, but it’s listed on Braemac (previously Symmetry Electronics) for 40 dollars.
So overall, it’s about the same price as the cheapest ESP32-C6 modules, and the hardware and software ecosystem is not quite as broad as for Espressif chips and modules, so it’s difficult to find a clear benefit of using the GD32VW553 or an equivalent ESP32-C6 part. The only difference I can see is the presence of FPU (F single-precision and D double-precision) and DSP/SIMD (P) extensions in the RISC-V core of the Gigadevice chip, which the ESP32-C6 part lacks, and may be useful for specific use cases.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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You will discover that if you are building anything more intelligent than a light bulb that it is not going to fit into 320KB RAM and 4MB flash. The problem is, you don’t don get to use all of the 320KB/4MB, you have to share it with the operating system and the operating system has already used most of it. And every time they release an OS update it gets bigger and your space gets smaller.
If you aren’t building light bulbs, I would pick the ESP32-S3 which has 512KB of RAM. The Xtensa instruction set is about about 15% more efficient than the RISC one so you get 15% more code in the same 4MB.
It is not obvious, but the 512KB RAM doubles what your app has to work with. The OS RAM consumption is about the same in both chips, when you add that extra RAM you get all of it for your app.
I did quite a lot of advanced stuff on esp32 that fits on like 1,5M, maybe you include to many external libs.
The devices I work on support OTA so you are limited to about 1.8MB in the image. You can definitely shoehorn stuff into these chips like I did on the ESP32-C3. My C3 device runs with 7KB of free RAM. But you can easily get screwed when the next release of the vendor’s SDK grows by 75KB flash and eat another 10KB of memory. There is no wiggle room.
So while it can be done, I don’t recommend doing it. Pay $0.30 more for the S3. Unlikely that you will run out of room on the S3.
Always happy with esphome. The only device I ever experienced space problems are some esp8266 with only 1mb flash. In that case the web Server component gets ditched and latest and greatest esphome goodness on (soon?) 10 year old smart devices!
But ESP32 supports extenal PSRAM up to 8MB, all your malloc()s can go there.
That would be so cool to have one of ESP32 or this guy with USB 2.0 host! There’s only ESP32-S2/S3 with USB Host support, but only 1.1 (Full Speed).