Renesas Makes the Jump to 22nm with a New RA-Class MCU with Software-Defined Radio, Sampling Now

Offering Bluetooth 5.3 Low Energy (BLE) at launch, this cutting-edge Arm Cortex-M33 microcontroller can be upgraded for future releases.

Renesas Electronics has announced sampling of its first microcontroller to be built on a 22nm semiconductor process node — an RA-family 32-bit Arm Cortex-M33-based chip with Bluetooth 5.3 Low Energy (BLE) provided via an on-board software-defined radio (SDR).

"Renesas' MCU [Microcontroller Unit] leadership is based on a wide array of products and manufacturing process technologies," boasts Renesas' Roger Wendelken of the sampling. "We are pleased to announce the first 22nm product development in the RA MCU family which will pave the way for next generation devices that will help customers to future proof their design while ensuring long term availability. We are committed to providing the best performance, ease-of-use, and the latest features on the market. This advancement is only the beginning."

Modern semiconductor manufacturing processes are measured, after a fashion, in nanometers — once the size of a given feature, then the smallest gap between features, and now a somewhat hand-wavy way of differentiating a next-generation process node from a previous one. While bleeding-edge high-frequency application class processors, like those from Intel or AMD, are now playing with single-digit nanometer process nodes, traditionally microcontrollers — needing to pack in far fewer transistors than high-performance application processors — have stuck with proven, and more affordable, double- or triple-digit process nodes.

That's key to why Renesas' announcement of a part built on a 22nm process node, a node which Intel began using back in 2012 for its Ivy Bridge family of chips before moving to 14nm for Broadwell in 2014, is notable: for microcontrollers, 22nm is an advanced node indeed. It allows the company to pack more components into a given area, and Renesas has taken full advantage of that extra capacity by fitting the chip with a software-defined radio (SDR) — powering Bluetooth 5.3 Low Energy (BLE) connectivity with direction-finding and low-power audio capabilities at launch, but upgradeable post-release to support new radio protocols and standards as-required.

The shift to a 22nm node will also bring with it an overall reduction in part size and gains in efficiency which can be exploited as either increased performance for the same power draw or a lower power draw for the same performance — or a balanced combination of the two. Renesas has not, however, yet shared full specifications for the part, including frequency and power requirements.

Renesas is now sampling the 22nm RA-family chips to "select customers," with plans for general availability towards the end of the year. Parties interested in requesting a sample should contact their local sales office for more details,

Gareth Halfacree
Freelance journalist, technical author, hacker, tinkerer, erstwhile sysadmin. For hire: freelance@halfacree.co.uk.
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