Renesas Electronics Synergy Platform: A Powerful Tool for Developing IoT Products

Product development cycle, total cost of ownership and entry barriers are the three major challenges of embedded system development. Faced with the rich and colorful IoT needs, from processing to wireless connection, from peripherals to software development, a single product cannot meet so many needs at the same time. Engineering developers have to choose different processing platforms according to different applications, which further increases the difficulty and cycle of product development.

Three major challenges in embedded system development

Product development cycle - Fixing the necessary system codes such as drivers, middleware, system integration, and cloud links can greatly shorten the development and certification time. At the same time, it is convenient to add additional innovative functions in addition to application design to achieve product differentiation functions required by the Internet of Things.

Total cost of ownership - In addition to the MCU hardware, there are a lot of system costs that are easily overlooked, including pre-research and evaluation, procurement, training, development and risk management, system integration, verification, upgrades and maintenance. These costs are not easy to find, and once they are not handled properly, they will cause huge losses.

Barriers to entry - As products become more diverse, the complexity of acquiring new technologies, learning, risk management, optimization, security and maintenance support will increase further.

Synergy, the IoT and embedded development platform launched by Renesas Electronics, consists of five parts: software, processors, tools and development boards, solutions and databases. It is a platform customized for IoT and embedded developers with more complete content, certification and support. It can free engineers from tedious infrastructure programming and accelerate the process of creative productization.

The five components of the Synergy Platform

The Synergy Platform enables engineers to start immediately at the API level, accelerating MCU software development and focusing on innovation and differentiation rather than spending valuable time on lower-level, repetitive, and undifferentiated work.

Creating and maintaining specialized microcontroller software at a lower level throughout the product lifecycle is expensive, especially when an RTOS, network communications, graphics, or specialized features are required. The Synergy Platform has all of these features and will continue to expand with new features as developers demand them.

The software part of the Synergy platform includes three parts: Synergy Software Package (SSP), software API and verified additional software. SSP is the core of Synergy software, all of which are software packages certified by Renesas Electronics, including application framework, real-time operating system, middleware, function library, HAL driver and board support package, which can cover most general development work.

SSP is the core of Synergy software, with a complete software development life cycle, capable of providing data sheets on multiple hardware platforms, meeting various industrial standards for software quality requirements, and providing reliable software quality assurance (SQA). Renesas Electronics tightly integrates, optimizes, tests, documents, and maintains SSP. Its layered architecture enables developers to write applications using common APIs and application frameworks, or directly connect to the device driver level as needed.

It is worth mentioning that in order to meet the needs of wireless applications in the Internet of Things, Renesas Electronics provides a series of wireless application frameworks to accelerate wireless connection functions. Including WiFi, low-power Bluetooth, cellular and other wireless applications, users can configure devices more conveniently through APIs, and the rich framework structure can easily add or find drivers provided by partners, support different modes of protocols, etc., so that wireless development is no longer a shortcoming in the design of the Internet of Things.

The Synergy microcontroller family includes four different series designed for end applications, including connected mobile devices and high-performance embedded system controllers for the Internet of Things market. Each series has rich performance, features and pin compatibility, providing the scalability, power consumption, code reusability and performance required by the embedded market.

The S1 Ultra-Low Power Series designs products with analog functionality, secure connectivity, and strong security for applications that require long battery life and standby time. The S3 High-Efficiency Series provides power-sensitive applications that require secure connectivity, advanced analog and timing control, safety self-test, segment LCD, and capacitive touch control. The S5 High-Integration Series enables demanding control applications, combining secure connectivity, large memory, serial memory expansion, high-precision analog, color LCD graphics (with 2D engine), and security. The S7 High-Performance Series can handle multiple high-speed secure connectivity channels simultaneously, drive stunning color displays, perform precision control operations, or sense analog signals with high accuracy.

Synergy Development Tools/Boards and Resource Libraries

Renesas Electronics provides a rich set of tools and development boards for the Synergy platform to support different levels of development. Accelerate time to market through rapid code development, facilitate file management, software and MCU configuration, code generation, compilation, debugging, and intuitive graphical interface design. All Synergy tools, support, development seats, and maintenance are provided with the Synergy platform.

The tools mainly include: e² studio ISDE and IAR Embedded Workbench® integrated solution development environment, C-RUN® runtime analysis tool, C-STAT® static analysis tool, power debugging and flash programming, TraceX® RTOS visual debugging tool, and GUIX Studio™ full-featured runtime library.

Rich development boards and development tools

Renesas Electronics has prepared a rich Synergy resource library for developers, including Synergy software packages and other debugging tools and development software, which can be downloaded and used at any time.

In order to highlight the characteristics of the Synergy platform, Renesas Electronics has launched a new generation of PK-CLOUD1 kit. The main platform of this kit is the standard Synergy PK-S5D9 kit. In addition, it also includes a sensor expansion board, wireless WiFi and cellular network modem modules, allowing users to register a cloud platform account, verify, and connect to the final cloud platform development in just a few steps. It includes wireless application frameworks for WiFi, Bluetooth and cellular communications, MQTT/TLS encryption functions for secure communication between "things" and the cloud, and seamless access to major cloud service providers such as Baidu Cloud, Amazon and Microsoft.

Synergy Platform provides a perfect combination of wireless communication and security protocols

By providing one-stop products and services, the Synergy platform effectively reduces initial investment costs, accelerates the software development process, and lowers the threshold for system development. It redefines the IoT and embedded development methods and accelerates the product realization process. It is an ideal solution for IoT and embedded system development.