Renesas Launches Two New "Entry-Line" Low-Power RA Microcontrollers, the RA4E2 and RA6E2

Renesas has announced two new families of chips in its RA microcontroller series: the second-generation RA4E2 and RA6E2 microcontrollers, claimed to offer "best-in-class power efficiency" while still packing enough performance for most projects.

"Our RA Family continues to exceed expectations by delivering market-leading performance, features, ease-of-design, and value," boasts Renesas' Roger Wendelken. "The new RA4E2 and RA6E2 Groups are exceptional examples of why many customers have adopted the RA family as their MCU [Microcontroller Unit] family of choice. We're confident that these parts will hit the sweet spot for a wide range of applications, and that many designers will look to the RA family for future designs as well."

The RA4E2 and RA6E2 sit at the entry point of the RA family as the lowest-cost parts to include CAN FD connectivity for automotive and industrial applications. The RA4E2 is the lower-performance variant of two, with a single Arm Cortex-M33 core running at up to 100MHz; the RA6E2 ups the clock speed to 200MHz for projects which need additional performance.

Both chip families offer 40kB of static RAM (SRAM), with the RA4E2 offering 12kB of on-chip flash memory and the RA6E2 a choice of 128kB to 256kB of flash.

The RA4E2 is the more battery-friendly of the two, drawing 82µA/MHz at 100MHz to the slightly more efficient but higher absolute draw of 80µA/MHz for the RA6E2 at 200MHz. Both include the option of USB 2.0, SCI, SPI, I3C, HDMI CEC, and SSI connectivity, alongside CAN FD, with the RA6E2 adding quad-SPI (QSPI) support and an integrated timer.

More information on the new chips is available on the product pages for the RA4E2 and RA6E2 respectively, with units and evaluation kits shipping now price-on-application. The parts are also being shown off at Embedded World 2023 in Nuremberg this week, for those in attendance.