Renesas Launches New RA8 Entry-Level MCU Product Group, Offering Cost-Effective, High-Performance Arm Cortex-M85 Processor

RA8E1 and RA8E2 provide ideal scalar and vector computing performance and best-in-class feature set to meet value-oriented market needs

Beijing, China, November 5, 2024 - Renesas Electronics, a global supplier of semiconductor solutions, today announced the launch of the RA8E1 and RA8E2 microcontroller (MCU) product groups, further expanding its industry-leading and popular MCU series. The RA8 series MCUs launched in 2023 are the first MCUs to use the Arm® Cortex®-M85 processor, achieving market-leading 6.39 CoreMark/MHz (Note) performance. While maintaining the same performance, the new RA8E1 and RA8E2 MCUs reduce costs by streamlining the feature set, making them ideal for high-volume applications such as industrial and home automation, office equipment, healthcare, and consumer products.

The RA8E1 and RA8E2 MCUs feature Arm Helium™ technology, Arm’s M-Profile vector extension, which delivers up to 4x performance improvement in digital signal processor (DSP) and machine learning (ML) applications compared to MCUs based on the Arm Cortex-M7 processor, enabling applications in the fast-growing AIoT space where high performance is critical for executing AI models.

The RA8 series integrates low-power features and multiple low-power modes, which can further improve energy efficiency while providing industry-leading performance. The combination of low-power modes, independent power domains, lower voltage ranges, fast wake-up times, and lower typical working and standby currents reduces overall system power consumption. Helps customers reduce overall system power consumption and meet relevant regulatory requirements. The new Arm Cortex-M85 core can also perform various DSP/ML tasks with lower power consumption.

The RA8 series MCUs are supported by the Renesas Flexible Software Package (FSP). FSP brings all the infrastructure software needed, including multiple RTOS, BSP, peripheral drivers, middleware, connectivity, network and TrustZone support, as well as reference software for building complex AI, motor control and cloud solutions, to speed up application development. It allows customers to integrate their existing code and selected RTOS with FSP to create full flexibility for application development. With FSP, existing designs can be easily migrated to the new RA8 series products.

“Our customers are impressed by the performance of our RA8 MCUs and are now looking for higher performance and more feature-optimized versions for their cost-sensitive industrial, vision AI, and mid-range graphics applications,” said Daryl Khoo, Vice President of Embedded Processing 1st Business Division at Renesas. “The RA8E1 and RA8E2 deliver the perfect balance of performance and features for these markets, and with FSP, they enable easy migration within the RA8 family or from RA6 MCUs.”

Key features of the RA8E1 MCU

• Core: 360MHz Arm Cortex-M85, including Helium and TrustZone technologies

• Storage: Integrated 1MB flash, 544KB SRAM (including 32KB TCM with ECC, 512KB user SRAM with parity protection), 1KB standby SRAM, 32KB I/D cache

• Peripherals: Ethernet, XSPI (eight-wire SPI), SPI, I2C, USBFS, CAN-FD, SSI, 12-bit ADC, 12-bit DAC, HSCOMP, temperature sensor, 8-bit CEU, GPT, LP-GPT, WDT, RTC

• Package: 100/144-pin LQFP

Key features of the RA8E2 MCU

• Core: 480MHz Arm Cortex-M85, including Helium and TrustZone technologies

• Storage: Integrated 1MB flash, 672KB SRAM (including 32KB TCM with ECC, 512KB user SRAM with parity protection + additional 128KB user SRAM), 1KB standby SRAM, 32KB I/D cache

• Peripherals: 16-bit external memory interface, XSPI (eight-wire SPI), SPI, I2C, USBFS, CAN-FD, SSI, 12-bit ADC, 12-bit DAC, HSCOMP, temperature sensor, GLCDC, 2DRW, GPT, LP-GPT, WDT, RTC

• Package: 224-pin BGA

A winning combination

Renesas combines the new RA8E1 and RA8E2 product group MCUs with a wide range of compatible devices in its product portfolio to create a wide range of "Winning Product Combinations", including entry-level voice and vision AI systems and home appliance human machine interfaces (HMIs). These "Winning Product Combinations" are based on products that are compatible with each other and work seamlessly together, with technology-proven system architectures that bring optimized low-risk designs to accelerate time to market. Renesas has now launched more than 400 "Winning Product Combinations" based on various products in its product lineup, enabling customers to accelerate the design process and bring products to market faster.

Availability

RA8E1 and RA8E2 Group MCUs and FSP software are available now. Renesas has also launched the RA8E1 rapid prototyping board and plans to release the RA8E2 evaluation kit including a TFT display in early Q1 2025.

(Note) EEMBC's CoreMark® benchmark is used to measure the performance of MCUs and CPUs used in embedded systems.