Renesas Electronics Launches World's First 28nm Automotive-Grade MCU

The product is a new generation of automotive control RH850/E2x series MCU

Expanding the entire Renesas autonomy™ end-to-end solutions portfolio from the underlying hardware

Tokyo, Japan, March 27, 2018 – Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE: 6723), a global supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, today announced the industry’s first integrated flash microcontroller (MCU) using a 28nm process and is now shipping samples. To create the next generation of more efficient, reliable, environmentally friendly and self-driving cars, this revolutionary RH850/E2x series of microcontrollers has built-in up to six 400Mhz processor cores, making it the industry’s first (Note 1) automotive control chip flash MCU capable of 9600MIPS (Note 2) instruction processing capabilities. The MCUs also feature up to 16MB of built-in flash memory and improved security features and functional safety.

Renesas autonomy™ is Renesas’ open, innovative and trusted development platform for intelligent assisted driving and automated driving. Through this platform, Renesas provides end-to-end solutions for the automotive industry’s evolution towards the next generation of eco-friendly, connected and autonomous vehicles. The 28nm automotive control MCU is a breakthrough product designed for cloud service connectivity and environmental perception. It features advanced technologies required for next-generation automotive control systems and forms a key product pillar of the Renesas autonomy Platform along with the Renesas R-Car family of system-on-chips (SoCs). Automakers and Tier 1 suppliers such as Denso have already begun adopting this 28nm MCU, recognizing that its superior processing performance will help develop the next generation of energy-efficient engines. At the same time, the MCU’s unprecedented scalability enables it to serve as a platform to cope with the evolution of future automotive electronic/electrical architectures and the integration requirements of electronic control units (ECUs) that this change brings.

Key features of the new RH850/E2x series MCUs

• Superior processing performance to achieve complex vehicle control required for environmentally friendly vehicles

In order to develop environmentally friendly vehicles and next-generation energy-saving engines, super processing performance is needed to support new fuel system designs. In addition, for miniaturized and efficient engines and converters for electric and hybrid vehicles, excellent processing performance and high integration are essential conditions. The newly released 28nm process flash MCU is the world's first microcontroller with up to 6 400MHz processing cores and 9600MIPS instruction speed. Compared with the earlier 40nm MCU, the new RH850/E2x series MCU can achieve 3 times the processing performance at the same power consumption level. The enhanced sensor interface built into the RH850/E2x series provides better precision control functions for the integration of automotive control systems. For the new MCU, Renesas Electronics' partners will also provide multi-core virtual environments and model-based development environments.

• Large flash memory for connected cars supports advanced OTA software updates

The demand for wireless download OTA function has led to the continuous increase in the capacity of built-in flash memory. The OTA function can automatically update the vehicle's electronic control unit (ECU) firmware through the wireless network to improve and enhance the safety performance of the system. The RH850/E2x series integrates 16MB of flash ROM and supports selective update of specific areas of flash memory based on user needs. The RH850/E2x has enhanced the configuration of the serial communication interface, supporting up to 10 channels of CANFD interface and 1 channel of Ethernet interface. The hardware security function that supports Evita Medium supports microcontrollers to implement fast and reliable OTA software updates.

• Enhanced functional safety for autonomous vehicles

To achieve the highest level ASIL-D standard in the ISO26262 automotive electronic/electrical system functional safety standard, the RH850/E2x series adopts a dual-core lock-step architecture to ensure that the calculation results of the two processing cores are completely consistent. The RH850/E2x can provide up to 4 sets of interlocked dual cores and has many hardware functional safety improvements. In life-critical applications, these features will detect problems immediately when failures occur and maintain system safety at all times. Renesas Electronics will provide safety analysis tools to help implement various safety systems suitable for different application scenarios.

Following the announcement of the 28nm embedded flash process development in February 2015, Renesas Electronics announced in September 2016 that it would collaborate with TSMC to produce 28nm MCUs. The launch of the world's first 28nm embedded flash MCU to the market today will be another important milestone for Renesas Electronics. Renesas Electronics has verified the application of Fin-shaped MONOS flash technology on 16/14nm and next-generation MCU products. As a global leading supplier of automotive semiconductor solutions, Renesas Electronics is committed to using technological innovation to drive industry development and build a safe and reliable automotive society.

To ensure the scalability of the RH850/E2x Series, in addition to the 28nm flash MCU, Renesas Electronics has also announced two 40nm MCUs that feature points (1) and (3) above. Samples of the RH850/E2x Series MCUs produced using the 28nm and 40nm processes will be available starting in March 2018.

For detailed parameters of RH850/E2x series products, please refer to the appendix.

(Note 1) Current performance compared to public data from other companies, data from Renesas Research.

(Note 2) MIPS stands for million instructions per second and is a way of expressing computer processing performance.

About Renesas Electronics’ MONOS (Metal Oxide Nitride Oxide Silicon) Embedded Flash Technology

MONOS is a structure of flash memory transistors, each of which consists of a silicon base and three layers of insulator oxide-nitride-oxide, with a metal control gate on top. Renesas Electronics has provided microcontrollers for IC card technology for many years, and has accumulated more than 20 years of experience in the application of MONOS flash memory technology. Based on its excellent performance in MONOS technology, Renesas Electronics has successfully developed a split-gate (SG) structure suitable for MCU internal flash memory. This new "SG-MONOS" flash memory can realize the high reliability, high speed, and low energy consumption functions of the microcontroller.