Renesas Electronics Unveils RA Family of 32-Bit Arm Cortex-M Microcontrollers with Superior Performance and Advanced Security for Intelligent IoT Applications

RA MCU Family Combines Advanced Security, Connectivity, HMI with Flexible Software Package and Comprehensive Partner Ecosystem

TOKYO, Japan ― October 9, 2019 -- Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE:6723), a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, today unveiled the Renesas Advanced (RA) Family of 32-bit Arm® Cortex®-M microcontrollers (MCUs). RA MCUs deliver the ultimate combination of optimized performance, security, connectivity, peripheral IP, and easy-to-use Flexible Software Package (FSP) to address the next generation of embedded solutions. To support the new family, Renesas has built a comprehensive partner ecosystem to deliver an array of software and hardware building blocks that will work out of the box with RA MCUs.

The RA Family ecosystem will help accelerate the development of IoT applications with core technologies such as security, safety, connectivity and HMI. Designing with RA MCUs makes it easy for engineers to develop Internet of Things (IoT) endpoint and edge devices for industrial and building automation, metering, healthcare, and home appliance applications. The RA Family is PSA Certified™ Level 1 and includes the RA2 Series (up to 60 MHz), RA4 Series (up to 100 MHz), RA6 Series (up to 200 MHz), and the dual-core RA8 Series, to be released later.

“RA MCUs offer customers the ultimate IoT security by combining our Secure Crypto Engine IP with NIST CAVP certifications on top of Arm TrustZone® for Armv8-M, while also providing tamper detection and reinforcing resistance to side-channel attacks,” said Roger Wendelken, Senior Vice President of Renesas’ IoT and Infrastructure Business Unit. “Scalability and compatibility across the RA Family lets customers build a range of products, and they can quickly begin development with our flexible software package using Amazon FreeRTOS, ThreadX, or other RTOS and middleware solutions.”

“With today’s fast pace of innovation, developers need to accelerate their time-to-market without compromising on crucial features such as security and connectivity,” said Dipti Vachani, senior vice president and general manager, Automotive and IoT Line of Business, Arm. “The new RA family of MCUs is PSA Certified, demonstrating that it is built on sound security principles, enabling developers to improve security and safety in high-performing endpoint devices.”

The first five RA MCU Groups available today are comprised of 32 scalable MCUs with Arm Cortex-M4 and Cortex-M23 processor cores. They feature pin counts of 32-pins to 176-pins, along with 256 KB to 2 MB of code flash memory, 32 KB to 640 KB SRAM, and connectivity such as USB, CAN and Ethernet. It is easy to transition within the RA Family thanks to feature and pin compatibility. Each RA MCU Group provides superior active and standby power, and enhanced features such as Renesas’ popular HMI capacitive touch technology.

The RA Family FSP provides an open architecture that allows customers to re-use their legacy code and combine it with software examples from Renesas and ecosystem partners to speed implementation of complex functions like connectivity and security. The FSP features Amazon FreeRTOS and will also add out-of-box support for ThreadX RTOS and middleware on Cortex-M23 and Cortex-M33 MCUs by early 2020, offering a premium device-to-cloud option for developers. These out-of-box options can be easily replaced and expanded with any other RTOS or middleware.

The RA Family roadmap will roll out additional MCUs in 2020 with more advanced technologies, unique features, and a growing partner ecosystem. The roadmap offers PSA Certified and Trusted Firmware-M (TF-M) API compliant devices, including Cortex-M33 MCUs, low-power Cortex-M23 MCUs, and BLE / IEEE 802.15.4 wireless IoT products. MCUs with TF-M / PSA certification will give customers the confidence and assurance to quickly deploy secure IoT endpoint and edge devices, and smart factory equipment for Industry 4.0.

RA Family Joins Renesas Heritage of 32-Bit MCU Leadership

The RA Family strengthens Renesas’ well-established and successful 32-bit MCU range, including the RX Family and Renesas Synergy™ Platform―all designed to provide unique differentiation and value to customers. Renesas Synergy is based on the Arm Cortex-M core and features MCUs combined with commercial-grade, warranted software and development tools. The Renesas eXtreme (RX) Family features a proprietary RX core with industry-leading 32-bit CoreMark®/MHz performance and the largest code flash memory and SRAM.

The first wave of RA devices incorporates hardware-based security features from simple AES acceleration to fully-integrated crypto subsystems isolated within the MCU. The Secure Crypto Engine provides symmetric and asymmetric encryption and decryption, hash functions, true random number generation (TRNG), and advanced key handling, including key generation and MCU-unique key wrapping. An access management circuit shuts down the crypto engine if the correct access protocol is not followed, and dedicated RAM ensures that plaintext keys are never exposed to any CPU or peripheral bus. The RA Family development environment offers on-chip debug, IDEs, compiler, support tools, board evaluation kits, design files, schematics, PCB layouts and BOM.

Pricing and Availability

The first five RA MCU Groups are available now from Renesas Electronics’ worldwide distributors with prices ranging from $2.50 USD to $7.00 USD in 10,000-unit quantities. For more information on the RA Family, please visit: https://www.renesas.com/ra.

About Renesas Electronics Corporation

Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE: 6723) delivers trusted embedded design innovation with complete semiconductor solutions that enable billions of connected, intelligent devices to enhance the way people work and live. A global leader in microcontrollers, analog, power, and SoC products, Renesas provides comprehensive solutions for a broad range of automotive, industrial, home electronics, office automation, and information communication technology applications that help shape a limitless future. Learn more at renesas.com.