Renesas Adds Lower-Cost Entry Parts to Its Edge AI RA8 Microcontroller Range: The RA8E1 and RA8E2
New parts retain Arm's Cortex-M85 with Helium extensions for efficient on-device AI and ML, but cut corners elsewhere for a lower cost.
Renesas has announced new lower-cost entries in its RA8 microcontroller family, featuring Arm Cortex-M85 cores with Helium vector extensions for boosted tiny machine learning (tinyML) and on-device artificial intelligence (AI) performance: the RA8E1 and RA8E2.
"Our customers love the superior performance of the RA8 MCUs and are now looking for more feature optimized versions combined with high performance for their cost-sensitive industrial, vision AI, and mid-end graphics applications," claims Renesas' Daryl Khoo of the company's edge AI line-up. "The RA8E1 and RA8E2 deliver the right balance of performance and features for those markets and, with FSP [Flexible Software Package], enable easy migration within the RA8 Series or from RA6 MCUs."
Launched last year, Renesas RA8 microcontroller family is based on Arm's Cortex-M85 processor core with Helium — vector processing extensions that deliver improved performance for machine learning and artificial intelligence workloads running on-device. The new RA8E1 and RA8E2 use the same core, and retain the same Helium extensions, but cut down on a few other features to deliver a lower-cost entry point for the range.
The RA8E1 features a single Cortex-M85 core running at up to 360MHz, 544kB of static RAM (SRAM) of which 512kB is accessible to programs and 32kB is carved out for the Trusted Compute Module (TCM), 1kB of standby SRAM, and 1MB of flash storage, plus peripherals including Ethernet, octal-SPI, I2C, USB Full Speed, CAN FD, and SSI buses, and 12-bit digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital converters (DAC and ADC).
The RA8E2 offers an upgrade over the new RA8E1 entry point and boosts the clock speed to 480MHz while adding another 128kB of user-accessible SRAM and an 16-bit external memory interface — but is only available in a larger BGA 224 package, to the RA8E1's choice of LQFP 100 or 144.
More information on the new parts is available on the RA8E1 and RA8E2 product pages on the Renesas website; samples are now available, with parts appearing in the channel soon; the company has also launched a Fast Prototyping Board based on the RA8E1, with an RA8E2 Evaluation Kit featuring a TFT display planned for early 2025.