Renesas’ Two New MCU Groups to Blazing Fast RA8 Series

The RA8M2 and RA8D2 microcontroller (MCU) groups were introduced by Renesas Electronics Corporation. With an industry benchmark of 7300 Coremarks for raw compute performance, the new MCUs are the newest Renesas products, based on a 1 GHz Arm Cortex-M85 CPU with an optional 250 MHz Arm Cortex-M33 processor. Effective job segregation and system partitioning are made possible by the optional Cortex-M33 processor.

As part of the second generation of the RA8 Series, the RA8D2 and RA8M2 devices are both ultra-high performance MCUs. The RA8M2 devices are general-purpose, while the RA8D2 MCUs are packed with a wide range of high-end graphics peripherals.

The RA8P1 and RA8T2 devices, which were released earlier this year, are based on the same 22-nm ULL process that is high-speed and low-power.

To meet the demands of a wide range of compute-intensive applications, the devices come with a specific feature set and single or multi core variants.

They provide a notable performance improvement for digital signal processor (DSP) and machine learning (ML) applications by leveraging the high performance of the Arm Cortex-M85 processor and Arm’s Helium technology.

 The RA8M2 and RA8D2 Devices Offer:

• Embedded MRAM that has several advantages over Flash technology,
• High endurance & data retention, faster writes, no erase needed, and byte addressable with lower leakage and manufacturing costs.
• SIP options with 4 or 8 MB of external flash in a single package are also available for more demanding applications.
• Both the RA8M2 and RA8D2 MCUs include Gigabit Ethernet interfaces and a 2-port TSN switch to address industrial networking use cases.

Large memory, a comprehensive peripheral set, and the excellent performance of the Cortex-M85 core are all features that both MCU Groups offer, which makes them especially well-suited for a variety of industrial and Internet of Things applications.

While the high-performance CM85 core remains in sleep mode and is only woken up when necessary for high-computing tasks, the lower-power CM33 core can serve as a housekeeping MCU, carrying out system tasks while lowering system power consumption.

RA8D2 Feature Set Optimized for Graphics and HMI Applications

The RA8D2 MCUs provide a plethora of features and functions for graphics and HMI applications:

• High resolution Graphics LCD Controller supports up to 1280×800 displays with both parallel RGB and 2-lane MIPI DSI interfaces
• Two-Dimensional Drawing Engine offloads the graphics rendering tasks from the CPU and supports graphics primitives

• Multiple camera interface options enable camera and vision AI applications,

• • 16-bit camera interface (CEU) with support for image data fetch, processing and format conversion

• • MIPI CSI-2 interface offers a low pin-count interface with 2 lanes, each up to 720Mbps

• • A VIN module performs vertical and horizontal scaling and format and color space conversions of YUV and RGB data inputs received from the MIPI CSI-2 interface
• Audio interfaces such as I2S and PDM support digital microphone inputs for audio and voice AI applications
• Comprehensive graphics solution with industry-leading embedded graphics GUI packages from SEGGER emWin and Microsoft GUIX, integrated into Renesas’ FSP

• Software JPEG decoder optimized for Helium, available with both emWin and GUIX solutions, allows decode of JPEG images with up to 27fps end-to-end graphics performance with Helium acceleration

• Multiple graphics ecosystem partners such as Embedded Wizard, Envox, LVGL and SquareLine Studio are offering solutions that employ RA8D2 using Helium to accelerate graphics functions and JPEG decoding

Key Features of the RA8M2 and RA8D2 Group MCUs

• Core: 1 GHz Arm Cortex-M85 with Helium; Optional 250 MHz Arm Cortex-M33
• Memory: Integrated 1MB high-speed MRAM and 2MB SRAM (including 256KB TCM for the Cortex-M85 and 128KB TCM for the M33). 4MB and 8MB SIP devices coming soon.
• Analog Peripherals: Two 16-bit ADC with 23 analog channels, two 3-channel S/H, 2-channel 12-bit DAC, 4-channel high-speed comparators
• Communications Peripherals: Dual Gigabit Ethernet MAC with DMA, USB2.0 FS Host/Device/OTG, CAN2.0 (1Mbps)/CAN FD (8Mbps), I3C (12.5Mbps), I²C (1Mbps), SPI, SCI, Octal serial peripheral I/F.

• Advanced Security: RSIP-E50D Cryptographic engine, robust secure boot with FSBL in immutable storage on-chip, secure debug, secure factory programming, DLM support, tamper protection, DPA/SPA protection,

The new RA8M2 and RA8D2 Group MCUs are supported by Renesas’ Flexible Software Package (FSP). The FSP enables faster application development by providing all the infrastructure software needed, including multiple RTOS, BSP, peripheral drivers, middleware, connectivity, networking, and security stacks as well as reference software to build complex AI, motor control and cloud solutions.

It allows customers to integrate their own legacy code and choice of RTOS (FreeRTOS and Azure RTOS) with FSP, thus providing full flexibility in application development. In addition, Zephyr support is now included. Using the FSP will ease migration of existing designs to the new RA8 Series devices.

Leadership Comments

“The RA8M2 and RA8D2 complete Renesas’ new generation of RA8 MCUs, purpose-built for the high-performance microcontroller market,” said Daryl Khoo, Vice President of the Embedded Processing Marketing Division at Renesas. “This portfolio empowers Renesas to deliver scalable, secure and AI-enabled embedded processing solutions that accelerate customer innovation and time-to-market across a broad spectrum of industrial, IoT and select automotive applications. Renesas’ commitment to innovation is reflected in the RA8 Series’ ability to address complex processing requirements while maintaining lower power consumption and minimizing total cost of ownership to future-proof customers’ designs.”

Winning Combinations

Renesas has combined the new RA8 Group MCUs with numerous compatible devices from its portfolio to offer a wide array of Winning Combinations, including the Smart Glasses and Pet Camera Robot for the RA8M2, and both Ki Wireless Power Transceiver System (Tx) and Ki Wireless Power Receiver System (Rx) for the RA8D2. They can be found at renesas.com/win.

Availability

The RA8M2 and RA8D2 Group MCUs are available now, along with the FSP software. The RA8M2 devices are available in 176-pin LQFP, 224-pin and 289-pin BGA packages. The RTK7EKA8M2S00001BE Evaluation Kit is also available. The RA8D2 MCUs are offered in 224-pin and 289-pin BGA packages. The RTK7EKA8D2S01001BE Evaluation Kit supports the RA8D2 devices. Information on all these offerings is available at www.renesas.com/RA8M2 and www.renesas.com/RA8D2.