Renesas Targets Advanced Human-Machine Interfaces with Edge AI, Releases the RZ/G3E Family

Renesas has announced another new entry in its RZ family of chips, the 64-bit RZ/G3E — a quad-core processor with integrated neural processing unit, targeting human machine interfaces (HMIs) with on-board machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML and AI) capabilities.

"The RZ/G3E builds on the proven performance of the RZ/G series with the addition of an NPU [Neural Processing Unit] to support AI processing," says Renesas' vice-president of embedded processing Daryl Khoo of the company's new processor option. "By using the same [Arm] Ethos-U55 NPU as our recently announced RA8P1 microcontroller, we're expanding our AI embedded processor portfolio and offering a scalable path forward for AI development. These advancements address the demands of next-generation HMI applications across vision, voice, and real-time analytics with powerful AI capabilities."

The RZ/G3E includes two or four 64-bit Arm Cortex-A55 cores running at up to 1.8GHz along with a Cortex-M33F core with digital signal processing (DSP) extension acting as a system control core. Alongside these is an Arm Ethos-U55 neural coprocessor delivering a claimed 512 giga-operations per second (GOPS) at minimum precision, designed for energy-efficient acceleration of machine learning and artificial intelligence at the edge — though models without this accelerator included are available for those who haven't jumped on the AI bandwagon.

The chip's design includes a 32-bit LPDDR4/LPDDR4X interface with support for error correcting code (ECC), dual Full HD (1080p) video outputs over MIPI Display Serial Interface (DSI), dual-link LVDS, or parallel RGB, 3D graphics acceleration, and H.264/H.265 encoding and decoding in hardware. There are two PCI Express Gen. 3 lanes, one USB 3.2 Gen. 2 connections and two USB 2.0 connections, two gigabit Ethernet connections, and CAN-FD support. The parts are also supported in Renesas' Verified Linux Package (VLP), based on the Civil Infrastructure Platform, with a ten-year maintenance lifespan — while Linux BSP Plus provides support for Yocto build environments and the latest long-term support (LTS) Linux kernel, with Canonical's Ubuntu Linux and the upstream Debian Linux also supported.

More information on the RZ/G3E is available on the Renesas website; the company has, as is usual, also released two reference designs built around the part, for a human-machine interface platform and a digital otoscope.