Renesas Presses MCU Performance Lead

With the expansion of the RA8 series, Renesas is leveraging its advantage as the first microcontroller vendor to integrate Arm’s highest-performing Cortex-M CPU. The introduction of the RA8D1 and RA8T1 MCUs expands the line with devices specifically optimized for graphics display and motor control applications in smart homes and buildings and appliances like washing machines.

The new products almost completely share the architecture of the RA8M1, the first device in the RA8 series that Renesas launched last year. But the RA8D1 and RA8T1 offer slightly different features to tailor them for graphics display and motor control applications, respectively.

Arm first introduced the M85 in April 2022. Nearly two years later, Renesas remains the only MCU vendor with devices that integrate Cortex-M85. The CPU offers performance advantages over other Arm cores and includes both TrustZone security technology and Helium technology for improving artificial intelligence (AI) compute performance. As a direct result of the new CPU, the RA8D1 and RA8T1 achieve a maximum clock speed of 480 MHz and beat competing single-core MCUs in Coremark performance and power efficiency.

Both new MCUs are built on a 40-nm process and are available now. Pricing in 100-unit quantities starts at $16.48 for the RA8T1 and $17.37 for the RA8D1.