The industry's first universal 32-bit risc-v based mcu

     Renesas Electronics has released the industry's first universal 32-bit risc-v based mcu with an internally developed CPU core. While many MCU vendors have recently joined investment alliances to advance RISC-V product development, Renesas has independently designed and tested a new RISC-V core that is now implemented in commercial products and available worldwide. The latest R9A02G021 series MCUS provide a clear path for embedded system designers to develop a variety of power-sensitive, cost-sensitive applications based on open source ISA.

     While most RISC-V solutions today are application-specific, this group of MCUS has been developed to serve multiple end markets such as iot sensors, consumer electronics, medical devices, small appliances, and industrial systems. As with existing general-purpose MCUS, designers will have access to the R9A02G021's comprehensive development environment provided by Renesas Electronics and its extensive network of toolchain partners. This will allow them to significantly reduce costs, engineering resources, and development time.

     "From our RISC-V-specific assp to this new general-purpose MCU, our goal is to provide commercially viable products that customers can quickly move into series production while demonstrating the benefits of the RISC-V architecture," said Daryl Khoo, vice president, Embedded Processing First Division, Renesas Electronics. In addition, customers are often faced with complex design challenges and tradeoffs, such as the choice of performance, power, memory, or CPU architecture. The new RISC-V MCUS provide additional options for customers who want to use open architecture products."

     As an early adopter of RISC-V, Renesas Electronics has a rich portfolio of RISC-V-specific products, including its 32-bit voice control and motor control ASSP devices and RZ/Five 64-bit general purpose microprocessors (MPUs), which are based on Andes Technology Corp. Developed CPU cores. Group R9A02G021 represents the first generation of general-purpose MCUS based on the RISC-V core developed in-house and will be launched over the next few years.

     "Until now, MCUS are a key potential market for RISC-V and have been lacking strong commercial designs from leading vendors, which account for around 85 percent of the MCU market," said Tom Hackenberg, principal analyst for Computing and software at Yole Group's More Moore Business Line. With Renesas Electronics launching full commercial availability of RISC-V multi-market MCUS across its diverse MCU portfolio, and much-needed support from recognized industry standard tool vendors, the RISC-V market is finally starting to accelerate. As other leading vendors follow Renesas' lead, RISC-V will account for 10 percent of the overall MCU market by the end of 2029, with significant growth potential."

     The RISC-V group provides ample performance, with clock speeds up to 48MHz and extremely low standby power consumption at 0.3µA. It offers 128KB of fast flash memory, 16KB of SRAM and 4KB of flash memory for data storage. The mcu can withstand harsh conditions and operate reliably over ambient temperatures ranging from -40 ° C to 125 ° C. These MCUS feature standard serial communication interfaces, as well as DAC and ADC capabilities that facilitate high-speed secure connectivity to sensors, displays, and other external modules. A wide input voltage range of 1.6V to 5.5V enables low voltage, low current operation and anti-noise capability, making the R9A02G021 ideal for battery-powered devices.

     These RISC-V MCUS are fully powered by the company's e² studio IDE, which is available to customers for free. The comprehensive toolchain includes a code configurator, LLVM compiler, and an FPB. The company's partners can also provide complete development environments :IAR's embedded workbench IDE and I-jet debug probes, SEGGER's embedded studio IDE, J-Link debug probes and Flasher production programmers. Supporting documents include FPB user manual, getting started Guide, schematic diagram, BOM, and Gerber files.