Holtek Semiconductor () is a

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

-based semiconductor design centre and provider with its headquarters and design operations based in the

Hsinchu Science Park The Hsinchu Science Park (HSP; ) is an industrial park established by the government of Taiwan on 15 December 1980. It straddles Hsinchu City and Hsinchu County in Taiwan. History The idea of the establishment of the Hsinchu Science Park was ...

in Taiwan, and has sales offices located in USA and India. Holtek's design focus is in both 32-bit and 8-bit along with Touch

microcontroller A microcontroller (MCU for ''microcontroller unit'', often also MC, UC, or μC) is a small computer on a single VLSI integrated circuit (IC) chip. A microcontroller contains one or more CPUs (processor cores) along with memory and programmable i ...

development, and as of 2022 the firm employed 631 employees. Holtek also designs and provides peripheral semiconductor products such as

remote control In electronics, a remote control (also known as a remote or clicker) is an electronic device used to operate another device from a distance, usually wirelessly. In consumer electronics, a remote control can be used to operate devices such as ...

telecommunication Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...

, power management, computer peripheral, and memory devices. Holtek's device application area is concentrated in the consumer product field such as household appliances, computer peripheral products, remote controllers, leisure products, medical equipment as well as industrial controllers. Holtek microcontrollers are in home appliances including brands such as

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...

Siemens Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad. The principal divisions of the corporation are ''Industry'', '' ...

Märklin Gebr. Märklin & Cie. GmbH or Märklin (MÄRKLIN or MAERKLIN in capital letters) is a German toy company. The company was founded in 1859 and is based at Göppingen in Baden-Württemberg. Although it originally specialised in doll house accesso ...

and Japanese brands such as Futaba and

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

History

Holtek Semiconductor was established as a design house in

Taipei Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the n ...

in 1983. From the design of remote control, telecom and voice/music devices, the company moved into microcontroller design. In 1988 the company moved to the

under the name of Holtek Microelectronics and began also its combined manufacturing and design operations. In 1998 Holtek Semiconductor Inc. became a pure design house with its device manufacturing contracted out. The decision to move out of manufacturing and focus on only design reflected many similar companies.

Products

Cherry MX 3850 USB - Holtek HT82K95E-3539

Holtek's design focus is in the area of microcontroller development. Holtek's 32-bit series is based on ARM Cortex-M0+ and Cortex-M3 cores. They are also producing

8051 The Intel MCS-51 (commonly termed 8051) is a single chip microcontroller (MCU) series developed by Intel in 1980 for use in embedded systems. The architect of the Intel MCS-51 instruction set was John H. Wharton. Intel's original versions were po ...

based controllers, but the majority of their 8-bit microcontrollers are based on a core designed in-house that is very similar to the Microchip PIC16 architecture. 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. Some of Holtek's 8-bit and 32-bit microcontroller devices: * HT32F51XX ARM M3 core based 32-bit series * HT85F22XX 8051 core based 8-bit series * HT46RXX A/D type series * HT46FXX Flash A/D type series * HT48RXX I/O type series * HT48FXX Flash I/O type series * HT49XX LCD type series * HT56RXX Tiny Power A/D type series * HT66FXX Flash A/D type series * HT68FXX Flash I/O type series * HT82XX Computer Peripheral series * HT95XX Telecom Peripheral series * BS8XXX Touch IC series Holtek develops other devices, most of which could be classified as microcontroller peripheral devices. One area is that of Low Dropout Regulators where Holtek has provided a range of products with low supply currents. Holtek supports traditional products such as remote control and telecommunication devices. Some peripheral products include: *HT7XX Power Management Devices *HT93X/24X Memory Products *HT12X Remote Control Devices *HT16XX Display Drivers *HT9XX Telecom Peripherals Holtek Semiconductor devices are used in home appliances, computer peripheral equipment, home medical equipment market. The company also provides a design service for customers with specific microcontroller needs. These special microcontroller devices may integrate functions such as smart card interface or medical analog circuitry within the microcontroller.

Development tools

Holtek also supplies its IDE-3000 development system to support its 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.

History

Products

Development tools

References

See also