Renesas Electronics announces expansion plans for its mcu business

Since the company was formed in April - through a merger between NEC Electronics and Renesas Technology - the company has focused on measures to draw out maximum synergies for its mcu business, both in the business direction and in its product portfolio. Now, the company is starting full scale efforts to implement a number of measures including the early launch of optimal mcu products and the expansion of its product lineups. It also plans to introduce customer support for more efficient software development and construction of a manufacturing system it calls the fab network. Renesas says it will standardise all of the peripheral IPs, such as timers and communication functions, incorporated in its mcus to make them compatible to all of its cpu cores. According to the company, it will integrate its infrastructure for developing mcus through combinations of cpu cores, peripheral functions and built in memory devices. It is also looking to shorten the product development period by approximately two thirds of that previously required. Renesas believes it will be able to streamline its product development resources, focus those resources to accelerate the expansion of its product lineup and develop a structure that can provide products to address market demands. The company also announced the provision of a standardised development tool common to all of its cpu cores - 78K, R8C, RX, SuperH and V850. This, says renesas, will enable effective utilisation of software assets and increased efficiency of software development. Hardware development tools, including emulators and flash writers that are fully compatible with all of Renesas Electronics' cpu cores are scheduled to be available starting in December 2012. An integrated development environment and software development tools - including compilers - are scheduled for availability starting in April 2011. Before the merger, the two companies developed and applied their own three process technologies for their respective mcus, Renesas now plans to integrate those six into three processes: 40 and 90nm processes for the development and production of high speed mcus with high performance and large capacity flash memory. There also plans for a 130nm process for the development of low power mcus with small and medium scale built in flash memory devices. By integrating the process technologies, Renesas says it will be able to form a 'fab network', allowing the same product to be manufactured at multiple plants. There are also plans to accelerate the development of its 40nm. With further plans include the provision of support for middleware, rtos and board hardware with its global partner companies Renesas Electronics aims to achieve an average annual growth rate of 8 to 10% in 2012.