Renesas RA8 MCU Group For Graphic Display Solutions And Multimodal AI

Renesas’ RA8D1 microcontroller (MCU) Group Arm® Cortex®-M85 Processor-Based Devices Offer Ultra High Performance, Graphics Capabilities and Leading-Edge Security for Building Automation, Smart Home, Consumer and Medical Applications.

Renesas Electronics Corporation introduced the RA8D1 microcontroller (MCU) group. Being the second from the Renesas’ RA8 Series, the New RA8D1 microcontroller (MCU) group is touted as the first MCUs based on the Arm® Cortex®-M85 processor.
Key Features of the New Renesas’ RA8D1 Microcontroller (MCU) Group:

• Breakthrough performance of over 6.39 CoreMark/MHz combined with ample memory,
• Graphics and peripheral functions optimized to address diverse graphics display solutions,
• Voice/Vision Multimodal AI requirements for a range of applications in building automation, home appliances, smart home, consumer, and medical market segments.
• Comes with an advantage of high performance of the Arm Cortex-M85 processor and Arm’s Helium™ technology with a vector/SIMD instruction set extension,
• Provides up to a 4X performance boost for digital signal processor (DSP) and machine learning (ML) implementations over the Cortex-M7 core.
• This added performance is ideal for graphics and neural network processing and can eliminate the need for a separate hardware accelerator in some applications.
• They also offer advanced security including Arm TrustZone® technology, Renesas Security IP (RSIP-E51A), Secure Boot with first stage bootloader in immutable storage, Octal SPI interface with Decryption-on-the-fly (DOTF), and Pointer Authentication and Branch Target Identification (PACBTI) security extension.

Key Specs and Benefits of the New Renesas’ RA8D1 Microcontroller (MCU) Group  

• The new RA8D1 devicesinclude a high-resolution graphics LCD controller with parallel RGB and MIPI-DSI interfaces to LCD display panels,
• A 2D graphics drawing engine,
• A 16-bit camera interface (CEU),
• Multiple external memory interfaces for storage of frame buffer and graphics assets, and 176 and 224 pin packages.
• Combined with professional quality graphics user interface software solutions from SEGGER emWin and Microsoft GUIX fully integrated into the Renesas Flexible Software Package (FSP).
• Renesas also provides support for open-source Light and Versatile Graphics Library (LVGL) and a robust network of graphics and AI ecosystem partners.
• A full-featured graphics evaluation kit with LCD panel and camera module rounds out the solution and provides a robust development platform for graphics applications including: industrial HMI, video doorbells, patient monitors, graphics calculators, security panels, printer display panels, and appliance displays.

“There is growing demand for high-quality displays to improve user experiences. The introduction of the RA8D1 MCUs showcases the design capabilities and market knowledge that have made Renesas the world leader in MCUs,” said Daryl Khoo, Vice President of the IoT Platform Division at Renesas. “These new devices take advantage of the unprecedented performance of the Cortex-M85 core and Helium technology to meet our customers increasing requirements for better display solutions and fast-growing vision AI implementations such as people and object detection, face recognition, image classification, and pose estimation.”
“Plumerai licenses highly accurate AI solutions to customers developing smart home cameras and IOT devices,” said Roeland Nusselder, CEO of Plumerai. “We have ported our Plumerai People Detection AI software to the new RA8D1 MCU that includes the powerful Arm Cortex-M85 CPU with Helium vector extensions. The RA8D1 speeds up our software by 6.5x compared to an Arm Cortex-M7 using Arm’s CMSIS-NN kernels. There’s a big demand for our AI solutions in home security, smart buildings, home appliances and retail. Using the RA8 MCUs from Renesas, we can now fulfill this demand.”

Added Key Features of the Renesas’ RA8 Series:

• Core: 480 MHz Arm Cortex-M85 with Helium and TrustZone
• Memory: Integrated 2MB/1MB Flash memory and 1MB SRAM (including TCM, 512KB ECC protected)
• Graphics Peripherals: Graphics LCD controller supporting resolutions up to WXGA (1280×800), parallel RGB and MIPI-DSI interfaces to external LCD and/or TFT display, powerful 2D drawing engine, 16bit CEU camera interface, 32bit external SDRAM interface
• Other Peripherals: Ethernet, XSPI (Octal SPI) with XIP and DOTF, SPI, I2C/I3C, SDHI, USBFS/HS, CAN-FD, SSI, 12bit ADC & DAC, comparators, temperature sensor, timers
• Advanced Security: Leading-edge cryptographic algorithms, TrustZone, Secure Boot, immutable storage, tamper resistance with DPA/SPA attack protection, secure debug, secure factory programming and lifecycle management support
• Packages: 176-pin LQFP, 224-pin BGA

Availability
The Renesas’ RA8 Series group MCUs are available now, along with the FSP software. Renesas is also shipping the RA8D1 Evaluation Kit that includes example projects targeted at graphics applications. Various Renesas Ready ecosystem partners also provide production-ready solutions for the RA8D1 MCUs. Renesas welcomes other partners who would like to port their software solutions to take advantage of the Cortex-M85 core and Helium. Information on all these offerings is available at renesas.com/RA8D1. Samples and kits can be ordered either on the Renesas website or through distributors.

For Further Info About Renesas MCUs renesas.com/MCUs.