1-GHz MCUs add dual-core flexibility
Renesas RA8M2 and RA8D2 MCUs integrate dual CPU cores—a 1-GHz Arm Cortex-M85 and an optional 250-MHz Cortex-M33—delivering over 7300 CoreMark points. RA8M2 devices suit general-purpose use, while RA8D2 MCUs target high-end graphics and HMI applications.
Both groups employ Arm’s Helium vector extension to accelerate DSP and machine-learning workloads. They provide up to 1 MB of MRAM and 2 MB of SRAM, including 256 KB TCM for the Cortex-M85 and 128 KB TCM for the Cortex-M33. The lower-power Cortex-M33 can act as a housekeeping MCU, handling system tasks while the high-performance Cortex-M85 remains in sleep mode, waking only as needed for compute-intensive operations.
With advanced graphics and imaging capabilities, the RA8D2 drives high-resolution TFT-LCDs for rich HMI designs. Its graphics controller supports up to 1280×800 displays via RGB or 2-lane MIPI DSI interfaces, aided by a 2D drawing engine that offloads rendering from the CPU. Camera and audio interfaces include 16-bit CEU and MIPI CSI-2 for vision AI, plus I²S and PDM inputs for voice-enabled applications.
The RA8M2 and RA8D2 MCUs are available now, supported by the Renesas Flexible Software Package for application development.
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