Global semiconductor solution provider Renesas Electronics (TSE: 6723) announced today that it is the first in the industry to launch a general-purpose 32-bit RISC-V microcontroller (MCU) - R9A02G021, built on an in-house self-developed CPU core. Although multiple MCU suppliers have recently joined investment alliances to drive the development of RISC-V products, Renesas has independently designed and tested a new RISC-V core - which has now been implemented in commercial products and can be sold globally. The new R9A02G021 MCU product group provides a clear path for embedded system designers to develop various power sensitive and cost sensitive applications based on open source instruction set architecture (ISA).

Although most RISC-V solutions today are targeted at specific applications, the R9A02G021 product group MCU is designed for multiple end markets, including the Internet of Things, consumer electronics, medical devices, small appliances, and industrial systems. Similar to existing general-purpose MCUs, designers can fully utilize the comprehensive development environment built by Renesas and its extensive toolchain partner network for R9A02G021, enabling them to significantly reduce costs, save engineering resources, and shorten development time.

Daryl Khoo, Vice President of Embedded Processing 1st Business Division at Renesas, stated, "From our RISC-V specific ASSP to this new general-purpose MCU, our goal is to provide customers with commercially viable products that can be quickly put into mass production while demonstrating the advantages of RISC-V architecture. In addition, customers often face complex design challenges and trade-offs such as performance, power consumption, memory, or CPU architecture. The all-new RISC-V MCU brings more choices for customers who want to adopt an open architecture."

As an early supplier of RISC-V, Renesas has a wide range of RISC-V specific application products, including 32-bit voice control and motor control ASSP products, as well as RZ/Live 64 bit general-purpose microprocessors (MPUs) based on Andes Technology CPU cores. The R9A02G021 product group, as the first generation general-purpose MCU based on Renesas self-developed RISC-V core, will be gradually launched in the coming years.

Tom Hackenberg, Chief Analyst for Semiconductor, Memory, and Computing at Yole Group, said, "So far, as a key potential market for RISC-V, MCUs have lacked strong commercial design from leading suppliers, accounting for about 85% of the MCU market. With the introduction of RISC-V's full commercial availability in its diversified MCU product portfolio and the much-needed support from recognized industry standard tool suppliers, the RISC-V market is expected to accelerate growth. As other excellent suppliers emulate RISC-V, RISC-V should have a huge growth potential close to 10% or even more of the entire MCU market by the end of 2029."

Balancing performance and power consumption

R9A02G021 RISC-V product group achieves excellent performance, with a clock speed of up to 48MHz and extremely low standby power consumption of only 0.3 μ A. 128KB fast flash memory, 16KB SRAM memory, and 4KB flash memory are available for data storage. This series of MCU is designed specifically to withstand harsh conditions and can operate reliably in ambient temperatures ranging from -40 ° C to 125 ° C. The product also features a standard serial communication interface, as well as digital to analog converter (DAC) and analog-to-digital converter (ADC) functions, facilitating high-speed and secure connections with sensors, displays, and other external modules. The wide input voltage range of 1.6V to 5.5V can achieve low voltage and low current operation, and has noise resistance, making R9A02G021 an ideal choice for battery powered equipment.

Key features of the R9A02G021 MCU product group

CPU: RISC-V core, 48MHz, 3.27 Coremark/MHz

Memory: 128KB code flash, 16KB SRAM (12KB and ECC SRAM 4KB), and 4KB data flash

Power consumption: 162 μ A/MHz (operating power), 0.3 μ A (SW standby), 4 μ S (standby wake-up)

Serial communication interfaces: UART, SPI, I2C, SAU

Simulated peripherals: 12 bit ADC and 8 bit DAC

Temperature range: -40 ° C to 125 ° C (Ta)

Working voltage range: 1.6 to 5.5V

Packaging: 16 WLCSP, 24/32/48 QFN packaging (QFP optional)

The R9A02G021 RISC-V MCU is fully supported by the Renesas e2 studio integrated development environment (IDE) and can be used for free by customers. This complete toolchain includes code configurators, LLVM compilers, and fast prototyping boards (FPBs). Renesas Electronics partners IAR (with Embedded Workbench IDE and I-jet debugger) and SEGGER (with Embedded Studio IDE, J-Link debugger, and Flasher production programmer) can also provide a complete development environment. The relevant supporting documents include FPB user manual, getting started guide, schematic, bill of materials (BOM), and Gerber files.

Successful product portfolio

The multi-functional intelligent pressure cooker developed by Renesas combines R9A02G021 with many compatible products in its product portfolio, such as RAA211412 DC/DC converter, ZSSC3224/3240 signal regulator, RV1S9231A IGBT driver, RJH60T04DPQ IGBT, and DA16200 Wi Fi SoC. The combination of these products provides a cost-effective, compact, and modular solution for modern interconnected appliances. This type of "successful product portfolio" is based on mutually compatible and seamlessly collaborative devices, with a technically validated system architecture that brings optimized low-risk designs to accelerate product launch speed. Renesas has now launched over 400 "successful product combinations" based on various products in its product lineup, enabling customers to accelerate the design process and push products to the market faster.

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