Renesas Expands its RA6M4 Series Microcontrollers Family for IoT Applications

Japanese semiconductor manufacturer Renesas Electronics Corporation has expanded its RA6 Series microcontrollers (MCUs) with 9 new RA6M4 Group MCUs, increasing the RA Family to 42 MCUs.

The Tokyo-headquartered company claimed that these 32-bit MCUs boost operating performance up to 200 MHz using the Arm® Cortex®-M33 core based on Armv8-M architecture with Arm TrustZone® technology.

The RA6M4 MCUs deliver optimized performance together with leading-edge security and connectivity supported by the easy-to-use Flexible Software Package (FSP).

In addition, the Renesas partner ecosystem offers software and hardware building blocks that work out-of-the-box with RA6M4 MCUs and FSP to address Industrial 4.0, building automation, metering, healthcare, and home appliance applications.

With strong security, rich connectivity, large embedded RAM with parity/ECC, low power consumption, and leverage of the Arm developer and tools ecosystem, the RA6M4 MCUs speed the development of intelligent IoT edge and endpoint devices.

The company’s enhanced Secure Crypto Engine delivers excellent security solutions, incorporating multiple symmetric and asymmetric cryptography accelerators, advanced key management, security lifecycle management, tamper detection, and increased resistance to side-channel attack, in addition to Arm TrustZone technology.

These integrated security features make the RA6M4 MCUs the ideal choice for connected applications, and enable customers to realize lower BOM cost and secure element functionality in all their IoT designs.

Commenting on the development, Roger Wendelken, Senior Vice President of Renesas’ IoT and Infrastructure Business Unit, said that “delivering on our promise at the launch of the RA MCU Family last October, I’m proud to announce its expansion with the RA6M4 MCUs. They offer customers best-in-class performance and security enhancements built with Arm Cortex-M33 cores that clearly deliver more memory, memory interface expansion, better power efficiency and wake-up time, and more connectivity options.”

Wendelken further added that “we intend to delight our customers who appreciate the higher level of security and IoT connectivity that the RA6M4 MCU Group brings with the confidence and ease of use that only comes by designing with Arm and securing with Arm TrustZone technology.”

“IoT edge and endpoint technologies are opening up new opportunities for developers to build smaller devices, with greater privacy and less dependence on the cloud,” said Dipti Vachani, senior vice president and general manager, Automotive and IoT Line of Business at Arm.

Vachani further said “the RA6M4 MCUs move intelligence closer to the data, with Arm TrustZone technology built in to ensure privacy and data integrity, helping securely accelerate the growth of IoT.”