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Renesas Expands Low-Power Industrial and IoT Applications Reach With New RA4M2 MCU Group in Arm Cortex-Based MCU Family

Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE:6723), a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, today announced the expansion of its RA4 Series microcontrollers (MCUs) with 12 new RA4M2 Group MCUs. The new devices deliver an exceptional combination of very low power consumption, high performance, and enhanced security features that positions them as ideal solutions for industrial and IoT applications.

The highly power-efficient RA4M2 Group offer a market-leading operating current of only 80 µA/MHz in active mode, and low standby current of 0.7 mA. Even with these leading specifications, the new devices have an extremely fast wakeup time from standby of 30 µs. With operating frequencies up to 100 MHz, the RA4M2 MCUs are ideal for performance hungry, low power applications such as industrial and IoT edge devices.

The RA4M2 MCUs employ the Arm® Cortex®-M33 core based on Armv8-M architecture. They feature Arm TrustZone® technology and Renesas’ Secure Crypto Engine. The Secure Crypto Engine incorporates multiple symmetric and asymmetric cryptography accelerators, advanced key management, security lifecycle management, power analysis resistance, and tamper detection. This combination enables customers to realize secure element functionality, enabling safety and security in IoT edge devices for low-power applications.

“The RA4M2 MCU Group is the ideal solution for very low power IoT edge applications, combining high performance and security features with low power consumption,” said Roger Wendelken, Senior Vice President in Renesas’ IoT and Infrastructure Business Unit. “Our rollout of market-leading solutions within the RA Family is a testament to the design, manufacturing and marketing prowess that has made Renesas the pre-eminent MCU supplier worldwide.”

Key Features of the RA4M2 Group
Very Low power consumption of 80 μA/MHz in active mode; 30 µs wakeup time
100-MHz Arm Cortex-M33 with TrustZone technology
Renesas’ Secure Crypto Engine as part of a full security solution
Scalable from 48- to 100-pin LQFP packages; also available in 48-pin QFNs
Integrated flash memory of 512KB, 384KB or 256KB; 128K SRAM
Capacitive touch sensing unit
USB 2.0 Full Speed
Advanced analog with one ADC (Analog-to-Digital Converter) unit
QuadSPI
SDHI
The RA4M2 Group is supported by the easy-to-use Flexible Software Package (FSP), which includes a best-in-class HAL driver. The FSP uses a GUI to simplify and dramatically accelerate the development process, while also making it easy for customers to transition from an original 8/16-bit MCU design. Designers using the RA4M2 MCUs also have access to the extensive Arm partner ecosystem, offering a wide range of tools that help speed time-to-market.”

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