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 important in high-speed electrical motor management that requires refined algorithms and utility software program to run in a dependable, secure and safe method,” says Renesas Daryl Khoo, vice chairman for embedded processing at Renesas. “The RA8T1 MCUs convey unprecedented CPU horsepower to the portfolio together with Helium expertise that enables our prospects the extra flexibility to ship good (AI/ML) [Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning] options with out the necessity for extra {hardware}.”
Renesas RA8 microcontroller household grows once more, with the brand new RA8T1 — targeted on motor management work. (📷: Renesas)
The RA8T1 launches because the third string to the RA8 bow, that includes the identical Arm Cortex-M85 core, operating at 480MHz, as its predecessors — and together with Arm’s Helium extensions, which ship a claimed fourfold increase to on-device digital sign processing (DSP) and machine studying workloads over the corporate’s earlier Cortex-M7 core.
In contrast to 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 routinely shut down a motor within the occasion of an anomaly being detected. Communication buses embody SCI, SPI, I2C/I3C, CAN/CAN-FD, Ethernet, and USB, and the components 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.
The corporate has designed a three-phase inverter to show the brand new chip’s potential. (📷: Renesas)
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 components 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 components at the moment are obtainable to order in-channel, with costs beginning at $13.47 per unit in tray portions.
