Renesas Electronics Corporation, a provider of advanced semiconductor solutions, has launched three new MCU clusters aimed at motor control applications. Additionally, Renesas is launching more than 35 new products, including devices from the RX and RA families.
The new MCUs add to the industry's leading motor control portfolio, including multiple MCU and MPU families, analog and power solutions, sensors, communications devices, signal conditioners and more.
Renesas is offering two new MCU groups from its AR family of Arm Cortex-M devices. The RA4T1 Group offers 100 MHz performance with up to 256 KB of flash and 40 KB of SRAM. The new RA6T3 Group offers an operating frequency of 200 MHz and provides 256 KB of flash and 40 KB of SRAM.
Both groups offer an impressive array of features and functions specifically for motor control applications, including trigonometric function units (TFUs) for acceleration, advanced ADC with integrated PGA, and a wide range of communications interfaces, including CAN FD.
The new parts are supported by the Renesas Flexible Software Suite (FSP) for easy portability of designs from other devices in the RA family.
Renesas is also delivering new RX26T Group MCUs from the RX family operating at 120 MHz with up to 512 KB flash memory and 64 KB SRAM. They support 5V power supplies, providing high noise immunity and control accuracy. They also provide TFUs, on-chip timing, and interrupt control.
Now, customers of the popular RX24T MCUs can easily scale designs to the new RX26T products to take advantage of existing design software while achieving performance improvements and control efficiency.
Embedded processing for motor control
Renesas introduced MCUs designed specifically for motor control more than 10 years ago. The company has shipped more than 1.1 billion embedded processors specifically for motor control to thousands of customers around the world.
In addition to the RX and RA families, Renesas offers 16-bit RL78 MCUs and 64-bit RZ MPUs optimized for engine applications. In 2022, Renesas introduced the industry's first RISC-V-based ASSP designed for motor control.
“The industrial engine market is expected to grow strongly as industrialization and machine automation technology continue to advance in emerging countries. The market will also benefit from the development of new production facilities across the industry in response to rising geopolitical risks,” said Takanobu Yamanishi, senior researcher at Fuji Keizai. “In particular, there is significant market potential in robotics, electronic component manufacturing equipment and power tools, all of which extensively utilize MCUs. We hope that with its wide range of motor control MCUs that meet diverse customer needs, Renesas can help the industry accelerate its growth.”
All new MCUs are supported by the Renesas Flexible Motor Control Development Kit, which allows easy evaluation of motor control using permanent magnet synchronous motors (brushless DC motors) and the Renesas Motor Workbench development tool. By improving motor control efficiency, Renesas MCUs can save energy in end systems.
