Renesas boosts entry level ARM controller performance to 200MHz

Renesas Electronics has launched an entry level family of ARM processors with speeds up to 200MHz.

Having completed its mainstream RA6 range of ARM-based microcontrollers, the entry level RA6E1 family of six devices is based on the ARM Cortex-M33 core with performance of 3.95CoreMark / MHz executing the CoreMark Algorithm from embedded Flash at 200MHz.

The devices include ARM’s TrustZone technology and Renesas’ Flexible Software Program (FSP) that supports all the ARM-based RA family devices.

The FSP includes highly efficient drivers and middleware to ease the implementation of communications and security. The FSP’s GUI simplifies and accelerates the development process. It enables flexible use of legacy code, as well as easy compatibility and scalability with other RA Family devices. Designers using FSP also have access to the extensive Arm ecosystem, offering a wide range of tools that help speed time-to-market, as well as Renesas’ partner network.

“Our RA Family is setting new standards in the market for Entry-Line MCUs with unprecedented performance,” said Roger Wendelken, Senior Vice President in the IoT and Infrastructure Business Unit at Renesas. “With the new RA6E1 Group we developed an MCU which is an exceptional fit for calculation-intensive IoT applications requiring both high performance and the lowest power, as well as the need for value-optimized feature integration and connectivity.”

The RA6E1 Group MCUs range from 48-pin to 100-pin packages, and from 512kB to 1MB of flash memory along with 256kB of SRAM.

The peripheral range includes an Ethernet block with integrated MAC, USB 2.0 Full-Speed, serial communication, SCI with flexible synchronous and asynchronous modes, I2C, SPI, CAN, SSI, SDHI, QSPI, as well as an integrated Renesas Timer and 12bit ADC and DAC blocks.

The devices support for wide temperature range of -40 to +85°C

Renesas has combined the RA6E1 MCUs with complementary analog and power devices for a Finger Print Sensor and a Cloud Gateway Module.

All the new RA6E1 MCUs are available today. To help engineers get started with the RA6E1 MCUs, Renesas is offering the FPB-RA6E1 Fast Prototype Board with an on-chip debugger, priced in the US$20 range.