80Top/s AI Vision MCU for Industrial Robots

Renesas, a leading semiconductor company, has set its sights on the industrial robotics market with the introduction of a cutting-edge microcontroller that integrates AI vision and real-time control processing capabilities. Known as RZ/V2H, these integrated circuits (ICs) feature Renesas' DRP-AI3 'dynamically reconfigurable processor' AI accelerator, which was recently showcased at ISSCC in San Francisco, delivering an impressive performance of 10Top/s/W.

The DRP-AI3 accelerator leverages advanced pruning technology to enhance AI computing efficiency, resulting in a significant boost in inference performance up to 80Top/s, as highlighted by the company. In addition to the AI accelerator, the microcontroller houses four 1.8GHz Arm Cortex-A55 CPUs for Linux application processing, two 800MHz Cortex-R8 cores for real-time processing, and a Cortex-M33 sub-core, positioning it as a top-tier member of the RZ/V2 vision processing MCU family.

"RZ/V2H is poised to revolutionize the development of next-generation autonomous robots equipped with advanced vision AI capabilities, enabling them to make independent decisions and execute movements in real time," stated Renesas. The company has successfully integrated its DRP technology to create the OpenCV accelerator, which accelerates the processing of OpenCV for seamless real-time execution of visual SLAM applications, such as those found in robot vacuum cleaners. OpenCV, an open-source vision processing library, is instrumental in simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) tasks.

Renesas is not only providing the hardware components but also offering a comprehensive suite of software tools to support developers in harnessing the full potential of the RZ/V2H microcontroller. This includes a library of pre-trained AI models, referred to as 'AI Applications,' and an AI software development kit ('AI SDK'). The company has introduced six variants of the microcontroller, each tailored to specific requirements, such as the inclusion or exclusion of security hardware, Arm Mali-G31 graphics accelerator, and the optional addition of a Mali-C55 image signal processor for models equipped with a Mali-G32.

Furthermore, the RZ/V2H microcontroller boasts a versatile set of interfaces, including PCIe, USB 3.2, and Gigabit Ethernet, ensuring seamless connectivity with a wide range of external devices and systems. The packaging for all variants is a compact 19mm, 0.5mm pitch, 1,368-ball BGA configuration, optimizing space utilization and facilitating integration into diverse industrial applications. Renesas has collaborated with Segger, a renowned debug solutions provider, to seamlessly integrate RZ/V2H support into its J-Link debug probe, streamlining the development and debugging process for engineers.