Renesas Electronics Corporation, a Japanese supplier of semiconductor solutions, showed the first demos of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in sophisticated applications on an MCU based on the Arm Cortex-M85 at 'embedded world 2023' in Nuremberg. At last year's 'embedded world', Renesas was the first company to present functional silicon based on the Arm Cortex-M85 processor. The applications now on show demonstrate the increased performance of the new Cortex-M85 core and Arm's Helium technology.
The first demo was a person recognition application in collaboration with the AI company Plumerai. It identifies people in different lighting and environmental conditions. The application's TinyML models enable low-cost and low-power AI solutions for IoT implementations.
The second demo showed predictive maintenance of motor controllers with an AI-based application for detecting unbalanced loads. It uses 'Tensorflow' Lite for microcontrollers with CMSIS-NN.
Acceleration of computationally intensive applications
Arm Cortex-M85 works with Helium technology, an M-Profile Vector Extension from Arm. Cortex-M85 is based on the Armv8.1-M architecture and offers the highest scalar and signal processing performance of the Cortex-M family. Helium technology brings an increase in ML and digital signal processing (DSP) performance. This enables compute-intensive applications such as Endpoint AI to be accelerated. Renesas will integrate the Arm processor into its RA (Renesas Advanced) MCU family.
With over 250 MCUs, Renesas has become a leader in the Arm MCU market. A partner ecosystem offers solutions for IoT, AI/ML, industrial, medical, building, home appliances and other applications.
TrustZone technology from Arm
The new Cortex-M85 core supports Arm's TrustZone technology. This enables the integrated crypto engine to provide immutable memory functions, key management and protection against DPA/SPA side-channel attacks. The Armv8-M architecture provides the PAC/BTI (Pointer Authentication/Branch Target Identification) security extension. This helps to achieve PSA Certified Level 2 certification. Renesas' Flexible Software Package (FSP) supports the new RA-MCUs. It enables faster application development by providing the necessary infrastructure software.
Field of application are IIoT and IoT applications
Renesas ships more than 3.5 billion MCU units annually, with about 50% of shipments going to the automotive industry and the rest to IIoT and IoT applications as well as data centers and communication infrastructures. Renesas has a portfolio of 8-, 16- and 32-bit devices and offers 16- and 32-bit MCUs. As a supplier, Renesas has decades of experience in developing smart, secure MCUs supported by a dual-source production model, advanced MCU process technology and a network of more than 200 ecosystem partners.
