Renesas packs 10Mbyte of sram into new embedded mpu family

The devices, based on the ARM Cortex-A9 processor, run at up to 400MHz and come with large on chip memories. Three sub families will be available – the RZ/A1H, A1L and A1M. These are differentiated by on chip peripherals and by on chip memory size. The A1H range will come with 10Mbyte of sram, claimed by Renesas as the largest currently available. With this amount of memory available, developers will not need to go off chip, meaning a wxga resolution display (1280x768) can be driven from the mpu. This, in turn, boosts performance, reduces power consumption and lowers cost. The A1L will feature 3Mbyte of sram, while the A1M will come with a 5Mbyte block of sram. All three variants will have 32k instruction and data caches, as well as a 128k level 2 cache. Meanwhile, Renesas and ARM are developing a version of the RTX real time operating system, which was created primarily for use with ARM's Cortex-M family of microcontroller cores. The move is said to facilitate porting of resources developed for the Cortex-M and to provide performance scalability in applications requiring real time performance. "ARM is pleased that Renesas is widening its ARM processor-based product portfolio," said Keith Clarke, vice president, Embedded Processors, Processor Division, ARM. "Recognising the importance of the market for automotive and industrial applications, ARM and Renesas have adapted RTX to work with ARM Cortex-A series processors for the first time. The combination of Renesas' experience in the embedded business with ARM's processor technology will enable our mutual customers to develop many more attractive solutions for automotive and industrial applications." Members of the RZ family will be supplied in qfp and bga packages and initial samples of selected devices should be available in July.