Renesas was the first in the industry to introduce a general-purpose 32-bit RISC-V MCU with a self-developed CPU core

     Renesas Electronics announced the industry's first general purpose 32-bit RISC-V microcontroller (MCU), the R9A02G021, built on an in-house self-developed CPU core. While several MCU vendors have recently joined investment alliances to advance RISC-V product development, Renesas has independently designed and tested a new RISC-V kernel that is now in commercial products and available for sale worldwide. The new R9A02G021 MCU product family provides a clear path for embedded system designers to develop a wide range of power-sensitive and cost-sensitive applications based on open source instruction set architecture (ISA).

     While most of today's RISC-V solutions are application-specific, R9A02G021 product group MCUS are designed for multiple end markets, including iot, consumer electronics, medical devices, small appliances, and industrial systems. Similar to existing general-purpose MCUS, designers can take advantage of the comprehensive development environment Renesas and its extensive network of toolchain partners have built for the R9A02G021, allowing them to significantly reduce costs, save engineering resources, and reduce development time.

     Daryl Khoo, Vice President of Embedded Processing 1st Business Division at Renesas said: "From our RISC-V dedicated ASSP to this new general-purpose MCU, our goal is to provide our customers with commercially viable products that can be quickly put into mass production while demonstrating the benefits of the RISC-V architecture." In addition, customers often face complex design challenges and trade-offs, such as performance, power, memory, or CPU architecture. The new RISC-V MCU brings more choice to customers who want an open architecture."

     As an early adopter of RISC-V, Renesas has a broad portfolio of RISC-V application-specific products, including 32-bit voice control and motor control ASSP products, as well as RZ/Five 64-bit general-purpose microprocessors (MPUs) based on Andes Technology CPU cores. The R9A02G021 product group, the first general-purpose MCU based on Renesas' self-developed RISC-V core, will be introduced in the next few years.

     Tom Hackenberg, principal analyst at Yole Group's Semiconductor, Memory and Computing division, said: "Until now, MCUS, a key potential market for RISC-V, have lacked strong commercial designs from leading vendors, which account for around 85% of the MCU market. With Renesas introducing full commercial availability of RISC-V multi-market MCUS to its diverse MCU portfolio, along with much-needed support from recognized industry standard tool vendors, the RISC-V market is finally expected to begin accelerating. As other leading vendors follow Renesas' lead, RISC-V should have significant growth potential approaching 10% or more of the entire MCU market by the end of 2029."