Embedded World: 84.3μA/MHz Cortex-M23 MCUs

Renesas is claiming “industry’s lowest overall power consumption for general purpose 32-bit MCUs” for its Arm Cortex-M23 based RA0 series.

Renesas RA0E1-block-diagram

Consumption is 84.3μA/MHz and the company “offers a ‘software stand-by’ mode that reduces power consumption by a further 99% to 0.2 µA”, it said. Wake from this mode is in 4.6μs or less if the internal 32MHz oscillator is used.

On this oscillator, Renesas said: Unlike other on-chip oscillators, it maintains precision in environments from -40 to 105°C. Customers [can] avoid trimming even after the re-flow process.”


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The data sheet rates it as ±1.0% over the IC’s full operating range of -40 to +105°C and 1.6 to 5.5V.

The first group in the series is RA0E1, with up to 64kbyte flash, 12kbyte ram, and 1kByte of data flash rated for 100,000 program-erase cycles.

Peripherals include: 16bit general PWM timer, 32bit interval timers, real-time clock, 12bit ADC, temperature sensor, UART, I2C and a serial peripheral that can implement a UART, simplified SPI or simplified I2C.

“RA0E1 MCUs include diagnostic safety functions as well as an IEC60730 self-test library. They also offer security features including true random number generator and AES libraries for IoT applications, including encryption,” said Renesas.

For safety and security there is: SRAM parity check, invalid memory access detection, frequency detection, A/D test, immutable storage, CRC calculator, register write protection, a unique ID and flash read protection

“The RA0E1 Group MCUs deliver the ultra-low power without sacrificing safety and data security,” said Renesas embedded processing v-p Akihiro Kuroda.

Package options include 16, 24 and 32pad QFNs, 20pad LSSOP and 32pad LQFP.

Support comes from multiple RTOS, peripheral drivers, middleware amd stacks for connectivity, networking and security, said Renesas, as well as software examples for AI and motor control.

Find Renesas and RA0 MCU demonstrations at Embedded World 2024 in hall 1 on stand 234.

The RA0E1 product page can be found here


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