The RA4M3 MCUs are designed to boost operating performance up to 100 MHz using the Arm Cortex-M33 core based on Armv8-M architecture. Featuring improved levels of performance, Arm TrustZone technology, Renesas’ Secure Crypto Engine, and a suite of new memory enhancements, the RA4M3 Group makes it easier to develop safer and more secure IoT edge devices for low-power applications, such as security, metering, industrial, and HVAC applications.
“I am excited about the rapid expansion of the Renesas RA MCU family following our RA6M4 MCU Group introduction last October,” said Roger Wendelken, Senior Vice President of Renesas’ IoT and Infrastructure business unity. “While RA6M4 target applications demand superior performance and advanced security, the RA4M3 Group offers a well-balanced combination of performance and power consumption with the same advanced security and safety. In addition, customers can take full advantage of the flexibility for memory expansion options that are typical for a broad range of industrial and IoT applications that require continuous innovation.”
The RA4M3 Group is intended for low-power IoT applications that require a balance of high performance, strong security, and higher memory. The RA4M3 MCUs combine TrustZone technology with Renesas’ enhanced Secure Crypto Engine, enabling customers to realise secure element functionality in a wide variety of IoT designs. The Secure Crypto Engine incorporates multiple symmetric and asymmetric cryptography accelerators, advanced key management, security lifecycle management, power analysis resistance, and tamper detection.
The RA4M3 MCUs drive power consumption down to 119uA/MHz in active mode running CoreMark from flash memory and 1.6mA in standby mode with standby wakeup times as fast as 30 µs – a critical element for IoT applications operating in the field for extended periods.
For memory-intense applications, designers can combine Quad-SPI and SD-card interfaces with the MCUs’ built-in embedded memory to increase capacity. The background operation and Flash Bank SWAP option is intended for memory optimised firmware updates running in the background.
The increased embedded RAM with parity/ECC also makes the RA4M3 MCUs suitable for safety-critical applications. The MCUs also feature several integrated features to lower BOM costs, including capacitive touch sensing, embedded flash memory densities up to 1 MB, and analogue, communications, and memory peripherals.
