Category: Renesas MCU

Posted on by Debashis Das - 1 Comment on Zalmotek RA6M1, RA8M1, and RZ/A3U SoMs follow Adafruit Feather form factor, support carrier board for robotics and industrial control

Zalmotek RA6M1, RA8M1, and RZ/A3U SoMs follow Adafruit Feather form factor, support carrier board for robotics and industrial control

Zalmotek RZ A3UL, RA8M1, and RA6M1 SoM

Romanian company Zalmotek has recently introduced three new SoMs, the RA6M1, RA8M1, and RZ/A3UL, and a modular carrier board designed for embedded applications such as robotics, industrial control, and edge computing. There are a few things that I find interesting about this setup. The SoM comes in Adafruit Feather form factor and, as a result, supports various Adafruit FeatherWings. The modular carrier board supports the Dynamixel motor driver module, the Particle M-SoM breakout module, Ethernet, and CAN modules. The RA6M1 Feather SoM is powered by a Renesas RA6M1 Arm Cortex-M4 CPU at up to 120 MHz, with 512 KB flash and 96 KB SRAM while the RA8M1 Feather SoM features a Renesas RA8M1 64-bit Arm Cortex-M85 running at up to 360 MHz with 128 Mbit SPI flash, the RZ/A3UL Feather SoM is based on a Renesas RZ/A3UL 64-bit Arm Cortex-A55 CPU at up to 1 GHz, with 512 Mbit OctaFlash […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Renesas RA0E2 low-cost, low-power Arm Cortex-M23 MCU operates in extended temperature range (-40°C to +125°C)

Renesas RA0E2 low-cost, low-power Arm Cortex-M23 MCU operates in extended temperature range (-40°C to +125°C)

Renesas RA0E2 Arm Cortex-M23 MCU

Renesas RA0E2 is a low-power, low-cost Arm Cortex-M23 microcontroller (MCU) Group part of the RA0 family introduced in 2024 that can operate in an extended temperature range (-40°C to +125°C) and offers a wide variety of peripheral functions and safety features. It follows the RA0E1 devices – the first member of the RA0 family – designed for consumer electronics, household appliances, power tools, industrial monitoring, and other applications, including battery-powered devices. The new RA0E2 MCUs offer both software and pin-to-pin compatibility (for 32-pin SKUs) with RA0E1 devices, but the new family adds more memory and storage with up to 16KB SRAM, 128KB code flash, and 2KB data flash. The RA0E2 also features more I/Os with 32-pin to 64-bit packages, instead of 16-pin to 32-pin packages. Renesas RA0E2 specifications: MCU Core – Arm Cortex-M23 Armv8-M Core up to 32MHz Memory and Storage 16KB SRAM Code Flash – Up to 128KB Data […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on SOMDEVICES µSMARC RZ/V2N system-on-module packs Renesas RZ/V2N MPU in a 82x30mm “micro SMARC” form factor

SOMDEVICES µSMARC RZ/V2N system-on-module packs Renesas RZ/V2N MPU in a 82x30mm “micro SMARC” form factor

SOMDEVICES uSMARC module Renesas RZ V2N

SOMDEVICES µSMARC RZ/V2N is a system-on-module powered by the Renesas RZ/V2N AI MPU and offered in a micro SMARC (µSMARC) form factor that’s quite smaller at 82x30mm than standard 82x50mm SMARC modules. The company told CNX Software it’s still 100% compatible with SMARC 2.1 with a 314-pin MXM 3.0 edge connector. It’s also cost-effective with a compact PCB and can be used in space-constrained applications. The µSMARC features up to 8GB LPDDR4, up to 128GB eMMC flash, two gigabit Ethernet PHY, and an optional WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.1 wireless module. µSMARC RZ/V2N specifications: SoC – Renesas RZ/V2N CPU Quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 @ 1.8 GHz Arm Cortex-M33 @ 200 MHz GPU – Arm Mali-G31 3D graphics engine (GE3D) with OpenGL ES 3.2 and Open CL 2.0 FP VPU – Encode & decode H.264 – Up to 1920×1080 @ 60 fps (Renesas specs, but SOMDEVICES also mentions up to 4K @ 30 […]

Posted on by Debashis Das - 1 Comment on Renesas RZ/V2N low-power AI MPU integrates up to 15 TOPS AI power, Mali-C55 ISP, dual MIPI camera support

Renesas RZ/V2N low-power AI MPU integrates up to 15 TOPS AI power, Mali-C55 ISP, dual MIPI camera support

Renesas RZ V2N MPU

Renesas has recently introduced the RZ/V2N low-power Arm Cortex-A55/M33 microprocessor designed for machine learning (ML) and computer vision applications. It features the company’s DRP-AI3 coprocessor, delivering up to 15 TOPS of INT8 “pruned” compute performance at 10 TOPS/W efficiency, making it a lower-power alternative to the RZ/V2H. Built for mid-range AI workloads, it includes four Arm Cortex-A55 cores (1.8GHz), a Cortex-M33 sub-CPU (200MHz), an optional 4K image signal processor, H.264/H.265 hardware codecs, an optional Mali-G31 GPU, and a dual-channel four-lane MIPI CSI-2 interface. The chip is around 38% smaller than the RZ/V2H MPU and operates without active cooling. The RZ/V2N is suitable for applications like endpoint vision AI, robotics, and industrial automation. Renesas RZ/V2N specifications CPU Application Processor – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 @ 1.8 GHz (0.9V) / 1.1 GHz (0.8V) L1 cache – 32KB I-cache (with parity) + 32KB D-cache (with ECC) per core L3 cache – 1MB (with ECC, […]

Posted on by Debashis Das - No Comments on Renesas RA4L1 ultra-low-power MCU family offers 168 µA/MHz operation, dual-bank flash, capacitive touch

Renesas RA4L1 ultra-low-power MCU family offers 168 µA/MHz operation, dual-bank flash, capacitive touch

Renesas RA4L1 ultra low power MCU family

Renesas has recently introduced the RA4L1 ultra-low-power Arm Cortex-M33 MCU family along with two evaluation/development boards. This new lineup consists of 14 ultra-low-power devices based on an 80 MHz Arm Cortex-M33 processor with TrustZone support and designed for metering, IoT sensing, smart locks, digital cameras, and human-machine interface (HMI) applications. The RA4L1 MCU family offers high power efficiency at 168 µA/MHz while active and a standby current of 1.70 µA while retaining SRAM. Additionally, they support segment LCD, capacitive touch, USB-FS, CAN FD, low-power UART, multiple serial interfaces (SPI, QSPI, I2C, I3C, SSI), ADC, DAC, real-time clock, and security features like the RSIP security engine with TRNG, AES, ECC, and Hash. Renesas RA4L1 microcontroller Renesas RA4L1 specifications MCU core Arm Cortex-M33 core (Armv8-M) Up to 80 MHz operating frequency Arm Memory Protection Unit (MPU) 8 secure regions (MPU_S) 8 non-secure regions (MPU_NS) CoreSight ETM-M33 Dual SysTick timers (secure & non-secure) […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments on Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker Kit Review – Part 3: Ubuntu 24.10 and the importance of power limits

Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker Kit Review – Part 3: Ubuntu 24.10 and the importance of power limits

Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker Kit Ubuntu 24.10 Review

I’ve already reviewed the Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker Kit with Windows 11 Home, and today, I’ll report my experience with Linux on the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V mini PC using Ubuntu 24.10 operating system. I would usually review systems with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS OS, but considering the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V SoC is so new, I installed Ubuntu 24.10 when I tested whether disabling VT-d (IOMMU) would improve Intel Arc GPU performance (it does to some extent), and it turns out it was a good decision because Ubuntu 24.04 requires lots of fixes and workarounds to work the Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker Kit, at least until Ubuntu 24.04.2 is released later this month with a more recent kernel. Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker Kit – Ubuntu 24.10 system information My Ubuntu 24.10 installed has both Linux 6.11 (default) and Linux 6.13 kernels, but I did most […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 36 Comments on Radxa Orion O6 Review – Part 1: Unboxing, Debian 12 installation, and first benchmarks

Radxa Orion O6 Review – Part 1: Unboxing, Debian 12 installation, and first benchmarks

Radxa Orion O6 Review Debian 12

Radxa sent me a sample of the Orion O6 mini-ITX motherboard for review. The system is powered by an CIX P1 (CD8180) 12-core Armv9 processor, equipped with 16GB RAM, and offers features like 5GbE, HDMI and DisplayPort, a PCIe Gen4 x16 slot, and more. It’s one of the most anticipated boards of the first part of 2025 since it’s powerful, offers a good performance/value ratio, and eventually promises to boot any ISO Arm64 image through an open-source BIOS / EDKII bootloader. I’ll start this review with an unboxing, NVMe SSD and WiFi module installation, and a short tutorial showing how to install Debian 12 operating systems before getting some system information and running a few benchmarks. In a few weeks, I’ll publish a more detailed review with features testing and more benchmarks to see what works and what doesn’t at this very early stage. Radxa Orion O6 unboxing I received […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments on Disabling VT-d improves Intel Arc GPU Linux performance on Meteor Lake and newer SoCs

Disabling VT-d improves Intel Arc GPU Linux performance on Meteor Lake and newer SoCs

Improve Intel Arc GPU performance Linux VT-d disabled

In this post, I’ll check whether disabling VT-d virtualization support may improve the performance of the Intel Arc GPU in recent Meteor Lake or Lunar Lake SoC using a Khadas Mind Maker Kit with an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V CPU with Intel Arc 140V graphics running Ubuntu 24.10. A few days ago, I read a post on Phoronix about Intel publishing tips to improve the performance of Intel GPUs in Linux: Keep the system updated with the latest kernel and Mesa versions. Ensure SoC firmware is up-to-date. These firmware updates currently require installing the Windows graphics driver; firmware updates via fwupd are in progress. Use Wayland where possible, as it supports additional modifiers for better performance. For MTL (Meteor Lake) and newer integrated GPUs, disable VT-d if virtualization is not needed. For discrete GPUs: Enable ReBAR_ Enable ASPM_ I was especially curious about the line about disabling VT-d virtualization […]

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