Renesas RA8 Microcontrollers Are Industry's First with Arm Cortex-M85 Core and Now Available

Today, Renesas introduced the RA8, the world's most powerful microcontroller and the first with an Arm Cortex-M85 core! This addition to their RA family targets machine learning applications in the industrial, automotive, and commercial spaces with Arm's Helium technology. These new chips close the performance gap between microcontrollers and microprocessors.

Here are three things to know about Renesas' new RAM81 Group of microcontrollers: they are powerful, excel at edge AI/ML processing, and have advanced security features.

Arm introduced the Cortex-M85 in April 2022. The RA8 microcontrollers (MCUs) are the first to feature the core and its new Armv8.1-M architecture running up to 480 MHz. The chip also contains 1MB of SRAM and either 1MB or 2MB of flash memory with support for caches and external memory.

While the performance of the M85 puts it closer to a microprocessor, it is still a microcontroller. For example, it includes a full complement of peripherals like 32-bit timers, 12-bit ADC, and 12-bit DAC. Its I/O ports communicate with Octal SPI, CAN-FD, USB FS/HS, 16-bit camera interface, the new I3C standard, and more.

The Armv8.1-M includes Helium. It is an M-Profile Vector Extension (MVE) that helps accelerate machine learning (ML) and DSP tasks. Arm and Reneasys say the improvement can be up to 4X faster over an M7-core and may eliminate the need for an additional DSP or AI accelerator. One example where Helium can help is natural language processing in an edge device.

RA8 microcontrollers include security features like Arm TrustZone technology, cryptographic accelerators, a true secure boot, and more. You can configure non-secure and secure partitions for memory, peripherals, and code. The processor SA Certified Level 2 + Secure Element (SE), NIST CAVP, and FIPS 140-3 certifications. Additionally, it includes Renesas Secure IP (RSIP-E51A).

Renesas' Flexible Software Package (FSP) supports the new MCUs. This platform accelerates application development by providing the infrastructure for your choice of real-time operating system (RTOS), peripheral drivers, and middleware. Renesas says their FSP eases the migration of existing designs to the processor architecture and helps you take advantage of its higher performance.

You can get started using the RA8 right away with Renesas' Winning Combinations. These engineering-vetted reference designs help accelerate product development. Two examples provided by Renesas are a Smart Robot Vacuum Cleaner and Smart Glasses. Alternatively, an eval kit (RTK7EKA8M1S00001BE) is available for more bare-bones evaluation.

RA8 series parts are available in sample and production quantity today. You can check with Renesas or distributors for stock availability and pricing. Variants are available in 100-pin to 224-pin packages. For more information, check out the RA8 product page, which includes datasheets, getting started guides, videos, and many more resources.