Renesas Launches the Ultra-Low-Power RA4C1, Promises Arm Cortex-M33 Power at 168µA/MHz

Renesas has announced another new entry in its microcontroller lineup, the ultra-low-power RA4C1 — featuring an Arm Cortex-M33 core running at up to 80MHz and an active power draw of just 168µA/MHz.

"Renesas' RA4C1 group MCUs [Microcontroller Units] offer an unmatched solution for metering applications, a very large market that is growing rapidly," claims Renesas' Daryl Khoo of one potential market for the new chips. "It's an example of our sales, marketing, and engineering teams working together with our customers to develop the right product for the right market at the right time."

The RA4C1 microcontroller chips are built around a 32-bit Arm Cortex-M33 core running at up to 80MHz and featuring Arm's TrustZone security subsystem, complete with true random number generator (TRNG) and hardware-accelerated AES cryptography, and can be specified with 256–512kB of dual-bank flash storage along side 8kB of data flash and 96kB of static RAM (SRAM).

Peripherals include low-power UART, CAN FD, SCI, SPI, quad-SPI, I2C buses, plus a 12-bit analog to digital converter (ADC) with an on-chip temperature sensor with a claimed ±1 percent accuracy, an on-chip LCD controller for low-power segment-based displays, a real-time clock with battery backup, and a low-power timer.

While Renesas has made much of the chip's security — including the promise of a RSIP-300 security engine with isolated subsystem protected by dedicated control logic and support for a 256-bit unique key — it's the power draw that is likely to attract most interest: the company claims a 168µA/MHz active power draw and a standby current of under 1.79µA while retaining all SRAM contents.

More information on the RA4C1 family, along with a "evaluation board" for experimenting with the chip, is available on the Renesas website; as is usual, the company has also used the new part in a "Winning Combination" reference design, this time for a smart metering system.