Renesas Combines Beauty and Brains with the RA8D1 MCUs, Boasting AI and 2D Graphics Acceleration

Embedded hardware specialist Renesas has launched a new family of microcontrollers, RA8D1, which combine the Arm Cortex-M85 core and Helium vector extensions with high-performance graphics capabilities — targeting at-the-edge artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI and ML) applications requiring graphical display capabilities.

"There is growing demand for high-quality displays to improve user experiences. The introduction of the RA8D1 MCUs showcases the design capabilities and market knowledge that have made Renesas the world leader in MCUs," claims Renesas' Daryl Khoo, vice president of company's Internet of Things (IoT) arm.

"These new devices take advantage of the unprecedented performance of the Cortex-M85 core and Helium technology," Khoo continues, "to meet our customers increasing requirements for better display solutions and fast-growing vision AI implementations such as people and object detection, face recognition, image classification, and pose estimation."

The new chips, brought to our attention by CNX Software, build on the company's earlier RA8M1 by adding a 2D graphics engine and LCD controller with support for parallel RGB or MIPI Display Serial Interface (DSI) connections to panels with up to a WXGA (1280×800) resolution. The idea: to offer low-power high-performance on-device ML and AI capabilities without having to sacrifice horsepower to driving a display for human-machine interface projects.

Exact specifications depend on the precise part chosen, with all models currently announced offering a single Arm Cortex-M85 core running at up to 480MHz with with the Helium vector extensions, 1MB of static RAM (SRAM) including 512kB in a Trusted Computing Module (TCM) with ECC protection, and 1MB or 2MB of flash storage.

There's a 16-bit CEU camera interface, 32-bit SDRAM interface for additional memory, Ethernet, octal SPI with execute-in-place (XIP) capabilities, I2C/I3C, SDHI, USB, CAN-FD, and up to six configurable SCI buses, 12-bit analog to digital and digital-to-analog converters (ADC and DAC), a two-channel comparator, an on-board temperature sensor, and a range of timers.

The new chips are now available, Renesas says, though pricing has not been supplied, with more information available on its website; the company has also launched the EK-RA8D1 evaluation kit as a quick-start platform, priced at $332.52 when ordered direct.