Renesas Makes Debut with Cortex M85 Microcontrollers

Renesas has announced the shipment of its Arm Cortex-M85 based microcontrollers, providing more details on the RA8M1 group of the RA8 series that was introduced at Embedded World in May.

The initial parts of the RA8M1 group are general-purpose microcontrollers with common specifications. These include a 480MHz Cortex-M85 processor with Helium and TrustZone, 1 or 2Mbyte programme flash, 12kbyte data flash, 1Mbyte sram, octal SPI with execute-in-place and decryption-on-the-fly, CAN-FD, Ethernet, USB (full/high speed), 16bit camera interface, and I3C serial. The package options available are 224pad BGA or LQFP with 100, 144, or 176 pads.

A total of eight parts have been introduced, covering all four package options and offering 1 or 2Mbyte of programme flash.

"Renesas today introduced the world's most powerful microcontrollers," the company claimed. "RA8 Series MCUs are the industry's first to implement the Arm Cortex-M85 processor, enabling the devices to deliver 6.39 CoreMark/MHz. This performance will allow designers to use the MCUs in applications that previously required microprocessors."

The RA8 series MCUs also include Arm's Helium vector extension, which accelerates DSP and machine learning algorithms, making processing four times faster compared to using a Cortex-M7 processor. Renesas stated that this feature enables edge and end-point devices to implement natural language processing in voice AI and predictive maintenance applications.

Security is a top priority for these MCUs. The RA8 series has been designed to meet PSA Certified Level 2 + secure element, NIST CAVP, and FIPS 140-3 certification. Arm's TrustZone provides a protected hardware environment for hypervisor code, while Renesas' 'RSIP-E51A' hardware accelerates cryptography and supports secure boot. Other security features include immutable storage for a hardware root-of-trust, octal SPI with decryption-on-the-fly, secure authenticated debug, secure factory programming, and tamper protection.

To reduce power consumption, the microcontrollers feature independent power domains, low power modes, and fast wake-up capabilities. Renesas is also shipping the 'RA8M1 group evaluation kit' (RTK7EKA8M1S00001BE) to support development.

For more information, visit the RA8M1 group product page.