Holtek Semiconductor is a major Taiwan based semiconductor design centre and provider. Along with its headquarters and design operations based in the Hsinchu Science Park in Taiwan, Holtek also has a major operating presence in mainland China as well as marketing centers throughout the world. Holtek's major design focus is in the area of 8-bit microcontroller development and has around 650 employees worldwide. Holtek also designs and provides a range of peripheral semiconductor products such as remote control, telecommunication, power management, computer peripheral, and memory devices. Holtek's device application area is heavily concentrated in the consumer product field such as household appliances, computer peripheral products, remote controllers, leisure products, medical equipment etc. as well as industrial controllers. The large volumes of Holtek microcontrollers manufactured over the years has seen their presence as the brains behind many well known home appliances and says much for the reliability of their devices. These include some European brand names such as Philips, Siemens, Märklin and Japanese brand names such as Futaba and Sony to name but a few. The company, although providing low cost controllers, is not over focused on the typical Taiwanese cost-down approach, but rather in being able to offer special features that competitors don't have. A glance at the Holtek selection guide will reveal a wide range of device with many special integrated functions.

Company history

The company's origins go back to 1983 with the establishment of Holtek Semiconductor as a design house in Taipei. From the design of remote control, telecom and voice/music devices, the company moved quickly into the fast emerging microcontroller design area. In 1988 the company moved to the Hsinchu Science Park under the name of Holtek Microelectronics and began also its combined manufacturing and design operations. This was followed in 1998 by the establishment of Holtek Semiconductor Inc. as a pure design house with its device manufacturing contracted out. The decision to move out of the manufacturing and focus their energies in the design only area reflects the decision of many companies in the semiconductor design business. This decision seems to have been well founded witnessed by the subsequent growth of the company. Although perhaps not the name you would think of when microcontrollers are mentioned, Holtek has grown to become the largest designer and supplier of microcontroller devices in Taiwan. The company's development has enabled it to hold also a commanding position in the China Mainland market making it a favoured choice for designers and manufacturers of electrical products.

Holtek products

Holtek's main design focus is in the area of microcontroller development. Holtek's 32-bit series are based around an ARM Cortex M3 core. Most of the microcontrollers in the present 8-bit Holtek range contain Holtek's self designed 8-bit RISC processor core although Holtek is now increasing its supply of microcontrollers with an 8051 core. All have common features such as timers, external interrupts, power-down functions, low-voltage reset, bi-directional I/O pins etc. The range of microcontrollers support clock speeds from 32 kHz up to 20 MHz. Device specific features include functions such as EEPROM memory, A/D converters, LCD interfaces, USB interfaces, operational amplifiers, etc. Some of Holtek's 8-bit microcontroller major device categories are listed below:

HT32FXX 32-bit series
HT85F22XX 8051 core based 8-bit series
HT48RXX I/O type series
HT48FXX Flash I/O type series
HT46RXX A/D type series
HT46FXX Flash A/D type series
HT56RXX Tiny Power A/D type series
HT49XX LCD type series
HT82XX Computer Peripheral series
HT95XX Telecom Peipheral series
HT66FXX Flash A/D type series
HT68FXX Flash I/O type series

Although the focus is on microcontrollers, Holtek continues to develop a large range of devices in other important areas, most of which could be classified as microcontroller peripheral devices. One important area is that of Low Dropout Regulators where Holtek has provided a comprehensive range of product offerings with the special characteristics of extremely low supply currents. Holtek also continues to support some of its traditional products such as Remote Control and Telecommunication devices, which were the products developed in the early days of Holtek but which are still in widespread use. Indeed the early HT12 series of Remote Control devices can still often be seen in DIY remote control projects, perhaps due to their easy availability and easy use. Some of Holtek's range of peripheral products includes the following device categories:
HT7XX Power Management Devices
HT93X/24X Memory Products
HT12X Remote Control Devices
HT16XX Display Drivers
HT9XX Telecom Peripherals
Holtek Semiconductor devices may not be a name that comes to mind when thinking of microcontrollers but the company holds a major presence in many of today's home appliances, computer peripheral equipment, home medical equipment market. The company also provides a silicon substrate rebonding FIB special ASSP design service for customers with specific microcontroller needs. These special microcontroller devices enable it to integrate special functions such as Smart Card interface, medical analog circuity etc within the microcontroller.

HT48RXX I/O type series

The HT48RXX I/O Series is a series of Holtek devices optimised for digital applications requiring multi I/O pins. The device range is supplied with Program Memory capacities from 0.5K to 16K and is One Time Programmable, OTP, type meaning it can be programmed by the user using Holtek supplied programming tools. The Data Memory capacity ranges from 32 to 576 bytes maker together club and is RAM type. Devices come in a range of package types from 10 to 64 pins. The 10-pin packages are Ultra Small package types, known as MSOP.

HT48FXX Flash I/O type series

The HT48FXX I/O Series is a series of Holtek devices optimised for multiple I/O control digital applications. The device range is supplied with Program Memory capacities from 1K to 8K and is a Flash Memory type meaning it can be reprogrammed by the user using Holtek's programming tools. Data Memory capacity is from 64 to 224 bytes and is RAM type. There is also 128 or 256 bytes of EEPROM memory available for non-volatile user data storage. The devices are supplied in a range of package types from 18 to 64 pins.

HT12X Remote Control Devices

This series of devices goes back to the origins of Holtek Semiconductor's earliest IC developments. Although designed many years ago, these devices have proved to be extremely popular for simple remote control applications and can be found in many of today's low end remote products. Their ease of use and low cost has certainly been two important factors for their widespread use in such a wide range of products. The devices are still readily available and have also been popular with electronic hobbyists proven by their regular appearance in electronic magazines such as Elektor and Everyday Practical Electronics forming an excellent introduction into the enoding and decoding of remote control signals.
The devices have a wide operating voltage range and include an internal oscillator circuit requiring only the addition of an external resistor to generate the modulation frequency. Their low power features make them popular in battery powered applications.

Holtek development tools

Hardware Emulator with Integrated Programmer
Holtek also supplies its IDE-3000 development system to support its full range of microcontroller devices. This is a suite of hardware and software development tools which includes real time hardware emulation and software simulation as well as tools for device programming of OTP and Flash type devices. Some of Holtek's ICE In-Circuit Emulators also include an integrated device programmer eliminating the need for separate programming tools. The separate programming tools can be operated in a stand alone mode without a PC connection. The newest hardware emulators offer the advantages of lower cost and use actual MCU hardware devices allowing them to emulate the microcontroller more accurately. The disadvantage is however that they can only emulate one type of device and not universal firmware dump recovery in nature like the earlier emulators.
The future will see Holtek delivering devices with on board debug facilities thus moving away from the traditional external hardware emulators. In fact many of Holtek's new devices already come equipped with an OCDS - On Chip Debug Support - interface, enabling FIB逆向工程咨询 designers to use a simple and low cost hardware interface to download microcontroller debug information direct from the device. Such an approach also allows a far better emulation procedure as an actual microcontroller device is used.

Future development strategy

The bias toward a higher concentration of microcontrollers in the Holtek device product mix is expected to continue although peripheral products will continue to remain an important part of the device range. The microcontroller development strategy, in addition to higher snaileye functioning 8-bit devices and a move away from OTP types towards Flash types, will also see releases of a whole new range ARM based 32-bit capacity devices. The trend to provide devices of lower power in response to the profusion of battery powered consumer devices has also seen Holtek begin to release its TinyPower range of microcontroller devices.

Other information

In recent years Holtek has worked closely with many universities in Taiwan and China to set up microcontroller development laboratories. While this effort is aimed at promoting microcontroller education among mainstream engineering courses it also serves to promote Holtek microcontroller devices among industries future engineers. In connection with this Holtek runs an annual microcontroller design competition where significant prizes are awarded for the best designs.