Renesas: Software is new battlefront in MCUs

Rick Merritt, EETimes
9/17/2012 10:24 PM EDT

BOSTON--The battlefront among microcontroller makers is shifting up the stack as vendors wrap their silicon in middleware, said a Renesas executive in a wide ranging interview just prior to the opening of Design East here.

Intel recently released a framework for embedded software based on security, management and Linux code from its McAfee, Wind River and PC divisions. Renesas made a similar move, cutting a deal to provide users of Renesas RX or RL78 MCUs with a license to Micrium’s software.

“A focus on the [MCU’s] instruction set architecture is misguided,” said Peter Carbone, vice president of marketing for Renesas Electronics America. “The model in the future is we need to provide both the hardware and software framework by market segments—that’s the game of the future,” he said.

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