Renesas Goes After Motor Management with Machine Studying Smarts, Launches the RA8T1 Microcontroller

Renesas has introduced a brand new microcontroller line in its RA8 household, the RA8T1 — providing Arm Cortex-M85 cores with Helium on-device machine studying acceleration in a chip optimized for motor management work.

“The efficiency of those MCUs is crucial in high-speed electrical motor management that requires subtle algorithms and utility software program to run in a dependable, protected and safe method,” says Renesas Daryl Khoo, vice chairman for embedded processing at Renesas. “The RA8T1 MCUs carry unprecedented CPU horsepower to the portfolio together with Helium know-how that permits our prospects the extra flexibility to ship good (AI/ML) [Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning] options with out the necessity for extra {hardware}.”

The RA8T1 launches because the third string to the RA8 bow, that includes the identical Arm Cortex-M85 core, working at 480MHz, as its predecessors — and together with Arm’s Helium extensions, which ship a claimed fourfold enhance to on-device digital sign processing (DSP) and machine studying workloads over the corporate’s earlier Cortex-M7 core.

Not like its siblings, nevertheless, the RA8T1 is described by Renesas as being “optimized for motor management” — due to new pulse-width modulation (PWM) timing options together with a three-phase complementary output, a double-buffer examine match register, and 5 section counting modes, plus analog peripherals together with 12-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and digital-to-analog converters (DACs) alongside high-speed comparators.

One other key characteristic for motor management work, Renesas says, is port output shutdown help — permitting the microcontroller to mechanically shut down a motor within the occasion of an anomaly being detected. Communication buses embrace SCI, SPI, I2C/I3C, CAN/CAN-FD, Ethernet, and USB, and the elements will be specified with 1MB or 2MB of dual-bank flash reminiscence and 1MB of static-RAM, together with 512kB with Error Correction Code (ECC) help.

As is common for Renesas’ product launches, the corporate has demonstrated the RA8T1’s capabilities in a reference design it dubs a “Successful Mixture”: a 20kW three-phase Energy Issue Correction (PFC) inverter, which mixes the RA8T1 with different Renesas elements together with the RA6M3 microcontroller, the ISL1208 real-time clock, and the READ2304G op-amp.

Extra particulars on the RA8T1 can be found on the Renesas web site; the elements at the moment are accessible to order in-channel, with costs beginning at $13.47 per unit in tray portions.