To promote the cultivation of semiconductor talents, the Renesas Cup Information Technology Frontier Invitational Competition kicks off

The second "Renesas Cup" Information Technology Frontier Invitational Competition, hosted by the Department of Higher Education of the Ministry of Education, the Department of Personnel and Education of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, organized by the National College Student Electronic Design Competition Organizing Committee, and sponsored by Renesas Electronics, officially started in June 2020.

The theme of this competition is "Agile Mutual Recognition and Interconnection", which aims to complete the image/voice fast and accurate recognition technology through physical information acquisition and processing, and the coordinated operation of various subsystems to reflect the future life. At present, 95 teams from 53 well-known universities across the country, with a total of 285 students, have registered to participate in the competition. In the following 3 months, the participating students will select topics, design and produce in a wide range of application fields such as smart cities, smart homes, and cloud applications, and submit their entries in early September for selection and final selection of the highest award of the competition "Renesas Cup" and the first, second and third prizes. The competition also received support and assistance from Renesas Electronics channel partners such as WT Microelectronics, Cytech, China Electronics Port, Avnet, E-Tron, Xinruili Technology, Youwan Technology, Tachibana Eletech, Dalian Zhuozhi Chuangxin, Sanrong Hi-Tech Design (Chengdu) and Huatai Software.

Renesas Electronics has selected and provided the advanced RZ/A2M development board for this competition, and participating students will design their own entries based on this development board. The Renesas RZ/A2M microprocessor (MPU) uses a unique hybrid approach to image recognition and machine vision, combined with proprietary DRP (Dynamically Reconfigurable Processor) technology, to quickly pre-process and extract features from image data, and is closely integrated with the Arm® Cortex® A9 CPU for artificial intelligence (AI) reasoning, which is particularly suitable for various smart appliances that require high-speed AI image processing. DRP is a dedicated hardware built into the RZ/A2M MPU, combining the high performance of the hardware solution with the flexibility and expansion capabilities of the CPU, which can significantly increase the running speed of image processing algorithms by more than 10 times, providing a high-quality development environment and a broader design space for the competition.

As early as 2008, Renesas Electronics signed a 10-year sponsorship cooperation agreement with the National Undergraduate Electronic Design Competition Organizing Committee, and exclusively sponsored the National Undergraduate Electronic Design Competition for five consecutive years from 2009 to 2017. Over the past ten years, more than 170,000 outstanding college students from various universities have participated in the Renesas Cup competition. In 2018, Renesas Electronics and the organizing committee started a new round of cooperation, and held the first "Renesas Cup" Information Technology Frontier Special Invitational Competition for the development of agile interconnection, information technology, and the Internet of Things. In the future, we will continue to work closely with the organizing committee to make the competition better, and look forward to seeing the outstanding designs of college students.

Nobuo Arayayama, General Manager of Renesas Electronics China, said: "Through the newly established Information Technology Frontier Invitational Competition, we can see the innovative and creative potential of China's future engineers. Renesas Electronics is very honored to be able to introduce advanced technologies, products and solutions to future electronic design engineers by sponsoring such competitions, and actively contribute to the development of China's education and the cultivation of talents in the semiconductor industry."