CH569 - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2023, 04:38:36 am
content: The CH569 is one of the next MCUs I'm meaning to evaluate. I liked the CH32V307, I'm having good hopes for this one. The MCU core should be relatively similar. But USB3 SS and the additional SerDes, that looks evil.https://www.wch-ic.com/products/CH569.htmlAnyone tested it yet?

author: IOsetting
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2023, 04:20:55 am
content: I checked the price, it is not cheap. For the price around 5$, I can buy a second-hand arm64 board that can run Linux.

author: tellurium
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 27, 2023, 11:05:29 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on December 23, 2023, 04:38:36 amLooks interestingDid you order a dev board already?

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 27, 2023, 11:11:23 pm
content: Quote from: tellurium on December 27, 2023, 11:05:29 pmNope, not yet - was kinda set back when looking at the SDK, as I mentioned in the other thread. But I guess it's probably still worth a shot.Edit: Had another look at the docs. There is only a datasheet that I could find. No ref. manual to be found. The DS documents the registers of some of the peripherals, but nothing on the USB3.0 controller, SerDes and Ethernet controller.So definitely looks like just some interface chip that you're supposed to use with the provided SDK, and if said SDK it doesnt fit your bill, game over.Of course, if I have missed the reference manual, please let me know. I'll be happy to see it. If it's not released, I don't know what good this chip would be for my use cases.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2023, 11:06:52 am
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on December 27, 2023, 11:11:23 pmThe IC and the hardware is quite interesting.I didn't go into details about the software, the "documentation" is here:https://github.com/openwch/ch569/tree/main/EVT/EXAM

author: pcprogrammer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2023, 01:59:49 pm
content: Quote from: tszaboo on December 28, 2023, 11:06:52 amThe quotation marks around documentation are in order. For the USB device it uses a library so a bit difficult to see what is actually done. For the host it looks if it tells a bit more in the code, but it is all code. No real documentation for as far as I looked.It is an interesting MCU for sure with the gigabit ethernet and USB3 both with build in PHY for it. This makes up for the higher price because there is no need for external PHY parts.Hopefully they will release some proper documentation for it, but I won't hold my breath while waiting on it.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2023, 10:30:34 pm
content: It's always the same problem with these chips. Documentation.I guess? there must be some IP issue reason behind not disclosing anything about the USB3, Ethernet and SerDes peripherals. That bites.Oddly, chinese companies don't seem to care much about IP in general when it comes to others' IP, but they seem to be pretty secretive about their own. Yeah. Something I've noticed numerous times.But in this particular case, it may come from the fact that those peripherals are IPs they bought and for which they are not allowed to disclose any details to their customers (otherwise licensing might have cost them much higher.) Again, just a wild guess.In any case, if the only way to use the chips is using binary blobs, no thanks.