High-performance Arm processors for cost-sensitive applications

     Renesas Electronics has introduced the RA8E1 and RA8E2 MCUS, extending the industry's most powerful family of MCUS. Launched in 2023, the RA8 series mcu is the first to feature Arm Cortex-M85 processors that deliver market-leading 6.39 Coremark/MHz1 performance. The new MCUS offer the same performance but with a simplified feature set that reduces costs, making them an outstanding candidate for high-volume applications such as industrial and home automation, office equipment, healthcare, and consumer products.

     These MCUS are powered by Arm Helium technology and Arm's M-Profile Vector Extension, which provides up to 4x performance improvements for DSP and ML implementations compared to MCUS based on Arm Cortex-M7 processors. This performance boost allows applications in the rapidly growing field of AIoT, where high performance is critical to executing AI models.

     The RA8 family of devices integrates low-power features and multiple low-power modes to deliver industry-leading performance while increasing power efficiency. The combination of low power mode, independent power domain, lower voltage range, fast wake-up time, and low typical operating and standby currents allows for lower overall system power. Help customers reduce overall system power consumption to meet regulatory requirements. The new Arm Cortex-M85 core can also perform a variety of DSP/ML tasks with lower power consumption.

     The RA8 series MCUS support Renesas Flexible Software Package (FSP). FSP accelerates the development of applications by providing all the infrastructure software needed, including multiple RTOS, BSPS, peripheral drivers, middleware, connectivity, networking, TrustZone support, and reference software, to build complex AI, motor control, and cloud solutions. It allows customers to merge their own legacy code and RTOS options with the FSP, thus providing full flexibility in application development. Using FSP will simplify the migration of existing designs to the new RA8 family of devices.

     "Our customers love the superior performance of the RA8 mcu and are now looking for more functionally-optimized, high-performance versions for their cost-sensitive industrial, visual AI and mid-range graphics applications," said Daryl Khoo, vice president, Embedded Processing First Division, Renesas Electronics. The RA8E1 and RA8E2 provide the right balance of performance and functionality for these markets, and with the FSP, it's easy to migrate between the RA8 family or RA6 MCUS."